YOUNGSTOWN — With city voters backing a charter amendment allowing the salaries of the law and finance directors to be determined by Youngstown council, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown is finally prepared to ask Kyle Miasek be appointed finance director.

Miasek, deputy finance director since 2006, was named by Brown as interim finance director in January 2018 in one of his first moves as mayor.

After a failed search for a finance director and praise by council members for the work Miasek has done on an interim basis, Brown plans to make the appointment permanent. That requires a majority vote in support by council under the city charter.

“Kyle is the finance director, but we haven’t had the official vote,” Brown said.

The major issue was salary.

The finance and law directors are paid $83,949 annually — 80 percent of the mayor’s salary — under the city charter.

At Brown’s request, city council agreed to put a charter amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot giving its members the authority to determine the salaries of the two positions.

Despite questions about the validity of putting the measure in front of voters as well as concerns about the proposal’s ballot language, the issue was easily approved 11,893 to 8,349, according to unofficial results.

The vote won’t be official until Nov. 18 when provisionals and late-arriving absentee ballots are included in the final vote by the Mahoning County Board of Elections.

City council will meet 5:30 p.m. Nov. 18, after the board of elections certifies the ballot.

Brown said it’s possible he’ll ask council to vote on approving Miasek as finance director at that meeting.

“We’ll have council make it official soon,” Brown said.

DOUBLE DUTY

Miasek, who has been doing both jobs — interim finance director and deputy finance director — and saving the city about $125,000 annually in salary and benefits, said he would accept the appointment.

Also, council’s finance committee is planning to meet a day after the full council meeting to discuss the salaries of the finance and law directors.

The salary changes in the charter amendment would be effective Jan. 1.

The reason for the change was as finance director Miasek makes $83,949 annually compared to $83,890 as deputy finance director.

With management employees getting 1 percent raises in January, the deputy finance director job would be paid $84,729, which is more than the finance director. That’s because the finance director’s salary was directed by the mayor’s salary — and Brown’s not eligible for a raise until Jan. 1, 2022.

Also, there are a couple of employees who work for Miasek who are paid more than him.

Law Director Jeff Limbian had questioned whether the amendment could appear on the ballot. Council had voted 5-2 on Aug. 26 in favor of the amendment, but it needed at least six votes to be an emergency measure. Without six votes, it had to wait 30 days to take effect, which was after the Sept. 4 deadline to submit charter amendments to the elections board.

But the law department — Limbian recused himself because it impacted his salary — determined it could be on the ballot because the 30-day waiting period was before early voting started Oct. 6.

The ballot language included all of Section 18 of the city charter, which is about salaries of city council members, council president, the mayor, law director and finance director.

That language repeated the existing section that includes the current annual salaries of $27,817.24 for council members and $28,117.24 for council president and that the mayor’s salary “must be the highest paid elected official” in the city at $104,936.

Some voters didn’t understand that the salaries of council members and council president were staying the same and the only change was to allow the law and finance directors to be paid an amount determined by city council. The amendment received support from 58.75 percent of voters, according to unofficial results.

Brown had attempted a search for a finance director in late 2018, his first year as mayor. The search resulted in four candidates, including Miasek and one who had been fired from his previous job.

But Brown did little to no follow-up and one candidate — county Treasurer Daniel Yemma, who was re-elected last week after running unopposed — withdrew from consideration in September 2019, a day after The Vindicator published an article about the stalled search.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com