MAYOR GRACE RESPONDS TO RECALL
Elyria – Elyria Mayor Bill Grace sat down with TMC NEWS just after the Recall Committee’s press conference and shared his thoughts on their efforts.
“These are challenging times, in Northeastern Ohio and of course the Country and Elyria is in no different position than the balance of the Country when it comes to the economic crisis. The difficult times are requiring drastic cuts to meet our budget and people are going to be frustrated, if not upset about these circumstances. The Mayor is an easy target for frustration; I understand that and accept that it goes with the territory and to those that want to express their displeasure in the form of a recall, well that’s within their right to do so. If it should come to that, a ballot situation, then I will defend myself to the community and it will play out however it will play out.”
During our interview with the recall committee they suggested that the Mayor was picking on the Fire Department as part of a personal vendetta – in fact, a Councilman questioned the Mayor during a Council meeting if that was a fact. Committee members said they didn’t feel the Mayor answered the Councilman – he did respond to us.
“No, this is not a personal vendetta.”
We then asked the Mayor if he felt that perhaps the recall effort was a personal vendetta against him by the Fire Department.
“I’ll say this; I believe it is a response to me trying to keep the City’s budget in order. When I won this office in 1999 it was with a great deal of support from the Fire Union, they were strong supports of mine at the time. As with my predecessor, with trying to maintain budgets – the Fire Department, this Elyria Fire Department has become so demanding they want more and more, and when they get more they want more and it just never ends and ultimately you can’t keep up with their demands. When that starts to happen, they don’t get what they want they start to take action against the person in charge.”
Grace said that they made it clear two years ago, while discussing budgets with the Fire Department that “this is your budget and we are going to hold the line.” Grace said two weeks later the Fire Union started supporting Holly Brinda in her campaign against him. “Timelines will show that we took action to force them to stay within a budget, and even then by the end of the year we increased their budget even further, in any case we held the line at that point. Everything that we have proposed as far as reductions, consolidations have all been backed by national standards and balanced by our financial resources.”
Another issue the committee and others have brought up was the number of people within the Grace Administration. Some people believe the City is too top heavy and that if the Mayor is going to make cuts he should start in his own office. The Mayor believes that he has done that by cutting his staff by 20%. The Mayor says that when he took office in 1999 his staff was the same size as his predecessor had for many years prior. That staff consisted of 1 Safety Director and 3 Assistant Directors, Administrative Assistant and 3 secretaries. The Mayor said that shortly after he took office he cut one from the secretarial staff, placing that extra work on the others. Then within the last year he has also cut one Safety Service Director position.
“My predecessor and then myself when I took office had 10 fulltime employees managing the city. We’re now down two from that so we have cut our administrative staff by 20 percent.”
Grace said that if you look at the numbers within the Fire Department, when he took office in 1999 they had 73 Firefighters and today they have 75. “And if you look at the Police Department when I took office there were 96 Police Officers and now there is 86 – so they have come down by nearly 10 percent. Many departments have seen cuts and even with our administrative office we have taken on more and more responsibility such as looking at fire audit materials, studies and necessary preparations for that or looking at revamping our sanitation program. We re did the routes last year and are preparing to change over to a cart program. We’ve done Utility analysis that resulted in the Utility changes and the overall master planning of our Utilities. All of these things – we negotiated a joint economic development district with Elyria Township that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year – grants with the Federal Government, these are all things that are the charge of the Mayor and the Administrative staff. These are things we do to help our city be more efficient, provide more service with less individuals and to seek more funds to come into our city. We’re the entrepreneurial wing of the city – we could keep reducing until it is just the Director and myself but there is going to be less service and direction given to the city.”
The Mayor believes that when he hears people call for him to reduce his staff it is an attempt by them to set him up to fail. “For those who want to see me fail, and I would say that the recall committee is largely comprised of individuals who have that agenda – part of setting me up for failure is to take away our staff. This community is well appreciated based on being elected and re-elected twice thereafter that they appreciate what we are doing for the city. Does that mean 100% of the community is behind what we do, of course not – you won’t find that anywhere.”
Grace said that all of the criticism that is being thrown at him now is the same that was brought up in past elections. Grace also pointed out that when he lowered the Fire Departments minimum manpower from 17 to 14 he did that 60 days before the election, not 6 days after. “We took action in a timely fashion that if the electorate were not happy they had an opportunity to express that displeasure in the voting booth.”
When it comes to making cuts in his administration, Grace wanted to make sure people know that they have been doing just that. “We’ve lowered our staff by 20 percent – The fulltime elected officials; myself, the Law Director and the Auditor took no pay raise last year and the Auditor and I and donating back our increase this year. The Auditor donating his directly back to the city and myself to the Parks endowment fund. So we’re coming forward and doing our part.”
Grace said that one thing he would like to improve is communications between the city and the citizens – ways to get information out to the people about what is happening in their city. “The overwhelming majority of our residents understand clearly that the economy is having dire effects on the city’s budget and their ability to provide services. It’s quite simple, companies are laying off due to this economy and that reduces the tax revenue coming into the city and we have to make cuts. It’s just that simple. We’re exhausting every resource, I work virtually around the clock, myself and my key staff – and we’ve been looking constantly at all the alternatives. People ask all the time, when are you going to do the layoffs, why haven’t you done the layoffs yet? It’s because we want to be very careful and we want to know that we’ve exhausted all reasonable resources and options short of doing what we’re going to do. We know we’re going to have to go through layoffs; the question is how deep are those layoffs going to be? We don’t want to overshoot the number of layoffs that we need but we need to get to it as quickly and thoroughly as we can so as to preserve as many employees as we can and the services that they provide.”
“These are challenging times, in Northeastern Ohio and of course the Country and Elyria is in no different position than the balance of the Country when it comes to the economic crisis. The difficult times are requiring drastic cuts to meet our budget and people are going to be frustrated, if not upset about these circumstances. The Mayor is an easy target for frustration; I understand that and accept that it goes with the territory and to those that want to express their displeasure in the form of a recall, well that’s within their right to do so. If it should come to that, a ballot situation, then I will defend myself to the community and it will play out however it will play out.”
During our interview with the recall committee they suggested that the Mayor was picking on the Fire Department as part of a personal vendetta – in fact, a Councilman questioned the Mayor during a Council meeting if that was a fact. Committee members said they didn’t feel the Mayor answered the Councilman – he did respond to us.
“No, this is not a personal vendetta.”
We then asked the Mayor if he felt that perhaps the recall effort was a personal vendetta against him by the Fire Department.
“I’ll say this; I believe it is a response to me trying to keep the City’s budget in order. When I won this office in 1999 it was with a great deal of support from the Fire Union, they were strong supports of mine at the time. As with my predecessor, with trying to maintain budgets – the Fire Department, this Elyria Fire Department has become so demanding they want more and more, and when they get more they want more and it just never ends and ultimately you can’t keep up with their demands. When that starts to happen, they don’t get what they want they start to take action against the person in charge.”
Grace said that they made it clear two years ago, while discussing budgets with the Fire Department that “this is your budget and we are going to hold the line.” Grace said two weeks later the Fire Union started supporting Holly Brinda in her campaign against him. “Timelines will show that we took action to force them to stay within a budget, and even then by the end of the year we increased their budget even further, in any case we held the line at that point. Everything that we have proposed as far as reductions, consolidations have all been backed by national standards and balanced by our financial resources.”
Another issue the committee and others have brought up was the number of people within the Grace Administration. Some people believe the City is too top heavy and that if the Mayor is going to make cuts he should start in his own office. The Mayor believes that he has done that by cutting his staff by 20%. The Mayor says that when he took office in 1999 his staff was the same size as his predecessor had for many years prior. That staff consisted of 1 Safety Director and 3 Assistant Directors, Administrative Assistant and 3 secretaries. The Mayor said that shortly after he took office he cut one from the secretarial staff, placing that extra work on the others. Then within the last year he has also cut one Safety Service Director position.
“My predecessor and then myself when I took office had 10 fulltime employees managing the city. We’re now down two from that so we have cut our administrative staff by 20 percent.”
Grace said that if you look at the numbers within the Fire Department, when he took office in 1999 they had 73 Firefighters and today they have 75. “And if you look at the Police Department when I took office there were 96 Police Officers and now there is 86 – so they have come down by nearly 10 percent. Many departments have seen cuts and even with our administrative office we have taken on more and more responsibility such as looking at fire audit materials, studies and necessary preparations for that or looking at revamping our sanitation program. We re did the routes last year and are preparing to change over to a cart program. We’ve done Utility analysis that resulted in the Utility changes and the overall master planning of our Utilities. All of these things – we negotiated a joint economic development district with Elyria Township that brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year – grants with the Federal Government, these are all things that are the charge of the Mayor and the Administrative staff. These are things we do to help our city be more efficient, provide more service with less individuals and to seek more funds to come into our city. We’re the entrepreneurial wing of the city – we could keep reducing until it is just the Director and myself but there is going to be less service and direction given to the city.”
The Mayor believes that when he hears people call for him to reduce his staff it is an attempt by them to set him up to fail. “For those who want to see me fail, and I would say that the recall committee is largely comprised of individuals who have that agenda – part of setting me up for failure is to take away our staff. This community is well appreciated based on being elected and re-elected twice thereafter that they appreciate what we are doing for the city. Does that mean 100% of the community is behind what we do, of course not – you won’t find that anywhere.”
Grace said that all of the criticism that is being thrown at him now is the same that was brought up in past elections. Grace also pointed out that when he lowered the Fire Departments minimum manpower from 17 to 14 he did that 60 days before the election, not 6 days after. “We took action in a timely fashion that if the electorate were not happy they had an opportunity to express that displeasure in the voting booth.”
When it comes to making cuts in his administration, Grace wanted to make sure people know that they have been doing just that. “We’ve lowered our staff by 20 percent – The fulltime elected officials; myself, the Law Director and the Auditor took no pay raise last year and the Auditor and I and donating back our increase this year. The Auditor donating his directly back to the city and myself to the Parks endowment fund. So we’re coming forward and doing our part.”
Grace said that one thing he would like to improve is communications between the city and the citizens – ways to get information out to the people about what is happening in their city. “The overwhelming majority of our residents understand clearly that the economy is having dire effects on the city’s budget and their ability to provide services. It’s quite simple, companies are laying off due to this economy and that reduces the tax revenue coming into the city and we have to make cuts. It’s just that simple. We’re exhausting every resource, I work virtually around the clock, myself and my key staff – and we’ve been looking constantly at all the alternatives. People ask all the time, when are you going to do the layoffs, why haven’t you done the layoffs yet? It’s because we want to be very careful and we want to know that we’ve exhausted all reasonable resources and options short of doing what we’re going to do. We know we’re going to have to go through layoffs; the question is how deep are those layoffs going to be? We don’t want to overshoot the number of layoffs that we need but we need to get to it as quickly and thoroughly as we can so as to preserve as many employees as we can and the services that they provide.”
posted by TMC NEWS at 11:07 PM
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