MANSFIELD, Ohio – The Rev. Derek Williams and the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church hosted a public safety forum Thursday to discuss the importance of the renewal of the safety tax directly with Mansfield’s mayor and top safety officials.
“The importance of our safety levy renewal is very important to sustaining the impact of our public safeties in which all of us enjoy in some shape, form or fashion,” Williams said. “The fact of the matter is that we need to make sure that we go to the polls to vote during this upcoming election… I wanted to call this town hall meeting because it’s very important for us to know the different things that’s going on in our community. It’s important to talk to the officials so we can know how the safety levy impacts us.”
Mayor Tim Theaker said the levy brings in about $7 million and funds the majority of the police and fire department budgets.
“It’s a half of a percent of income tax. It is a renewal” he said. “It is a safety tax that has been in existence since 1988 and it is definitely needed,” said Theaker.
About $10.9 million comes from the city’s general fund to fund the police, fire and 911 operations, the mayor said. The PRIDE tax that passed in 2013 generates about $3.5 million and about $1.5 million comes from EMS transport.
“The renewal tax also does not affect those who are retired or on social security,” he said.
Mansfield Fire Chief Steven Strickling said the budget for his department is about $10 million.
“This levy is about 30 to 33 percent of our budget,” he said. “If for some reason it didn’t pass, it would be fairly catastrophic for us. We would have to have huge cuts in services.”
The fire department currently employs 92 people but is authorized to have up to 102, Strickling said. There are no immediate plans for hiring.
“I feel like we can provide a good service and we are providing a good service now as far as the fire and EMS, and I think we can continue to do that with the numbers we have,” he said.
The Fire Prevention Bureau, which helps with fire inspections, preschool programs and changing batteries in smoke detectors for the elderly, has been beefed up to two people, the fire chief said.
Police Chief Ken Coontz said the safety levy is also critical to his department and the community. In 2014, the department handled just over 37,000 calls for service.
“The city of Mansfield is not lacking in the need for police services,” he said. “We handled over 300 drug cases just out of our small drug unit and we’ve arrested over 4,000 people. We’ve issued just over 3,000 summonses. We handled over 1,300 traffic crashes and our detectives handle nearly 2,000 cases for follow up. And on top of all that, we have one domestic violence officer who handles over 1,000 calls of follow ups with victims.”
Coontz said the authorized number of police officers for a city of Mansfield’s size is 102, but department currently employs 81.
A big portion of the safety tax goes to the detective and patrol bureaus, he said.
“We have really pushed our sex crimes unit,” the police chief said. “We’ve been doing a lot of cases on internet crimes against children. We have another investigator who’s in charge of handling sexual assault cases. These are very serious crimes and trust me, they are occurring in our community. In order to maintain our services, we truly depend upon the renewal of the safety levy that has been in place for nearly 26 years.”
City Law Director John Spon said passage of the safety renewal tax also helps with pursuing misdemeanor domestic violence cases.
“The more police officers we have, the better job we can do to protect the victims of domestic violence,” he said. “And, it’s not just protecting the victims of domestic violence and it’s not just prosecuting the people who perpetrate these crimes. It’s also using our victims advocate program in conjunction with the police officers. We also try to find out what’s going on in the family.”
There also was a question and answer portion where residents asked about officer body cameras and community policing efforts.
Mansfield City Council members Don Bryant, Garnetta Pender, Jon Van Harlingen and Butch Jefferson were in attendance. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People registered people to vote.
Early voting in the May 5 primary started April 7.
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