Youngstown council OKs $17,500 for VXI shuttle

By David Skolnick

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The city won’t save as much money as its officials had anticipated by changing a parking deal with a major downtown company.

City council approved legislation Wednesday to spend up to $17,500 for the last two months of the year to provide bus-shuttle service from the Covelli Centre parking lot for VXI Global Solutions employees to the company’s office at 20 Federal Place.

As part of an incentive package to get VXI to come to the downtown building at 20 W. Federal St. and then expand, city officials agreed to provide free parking for the call center’s employees.

The employees have parked at the Plaza Parking Deck, a short walk to VXI’s office at the city-owned building.

Since May, VXI was reducing its monthly rent by $15,750 — $189,000 annually — to pay parking fees at the deck.

Mayor Charles Sammarone wanted to save most of that money by having VXI employees park at the Covelli Centre at no cost to the city. The city owns the center and its parking lots.

Because of the shuttle service expense between the two locations, not all of the VXI parking cost would be eliminated.

The mayor said two weeks ago that he expected to save about $9,000 to $11,000 a month by having VXI employees park at the center.

But after checking with bus companies, city officials learned the shuttle-service is more costly than anticipated. The city would save $7,000 a month.

“It’s still a savings; not as much as we’d like to see, but it cuts expenses,” said T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s economic- development director, the point-person for the VXI parking talks.

The city will hire a company shortly for the shuttle service, to start Nov. 1, and use the final two months of the year to evaluate what can be done to reduce the bus expenses, she said.

“At the end of the two months, we’ll have to determine if this is the route we’ll take or come up with an alternate solution,” Woodberry said.

The city hasn’t finalized a written agreement on parking with VXI with the company, first wanting to have the shuttle arrangement in place, she said.

Also Wednesday, council adopted a vacant-structure registration program.

The program requires owners of unoccupied structures — with some exceptions — to pay $100 a year for a vacant house and $250 for commercial or industrial buildings each year. The owner of a vacant structure has 30 days from the time of the vacancy to pay the fee.

Those failing to file would be subject to a $50-a-day fine up to $1,000 and could also be charged criminally with a fine of up to $200 a day, with no limit.