YOUNGSTOWN — A Youngstown law department attorney told a city council committee that it does not have the authority to replace the rank of police detective sergeant with sergeant — something that some council members disputed.

At Thursday’s council safety committee, A. Joseph Fritz, a senior assistant law director, said: “The actual number is not for council to make a decision upon. It’s for department heads and the administration to take care of that through negotiating and the such.”

Fritz said council can make suggestions and pass nonbinding resolutions. But if there are to be any changes it would be done by the administration and in compliance with union contracts, he said.

The safety committee asked Fritz at its March 28 meeting to determine how it could change the rank of detective sergeant to sergeant without a reduction in pay for existing officers. The committee members are interested in the change because they say it would permit more patrol officers to be hired while the number of ranking officers would be reduced through attrition.

Council members Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward and a retired police chief, and Anita Davis, D-6th Ward and a retired detective sergeant, pushed back on Fritz’s statements.

“It’s nothing that impacts collective bargaining or negotiations,” Hughes said. “It’s the same pay and the same responsibilities.”

Davis said city council sets the staffing levels by passing a master salary ordinance.

“We can determine how many are in a department,” she said. “In the end, it’s up to council.”

Every time a ranking officer leaves, a patrol officer is promoted. There are 30 detective sergeants, seven lieutenants and four captains. There are currently 93 patrol officers with plans to add 11 more this year as long as there are no additional departures.

Of the 30 detective sergeants, 14 work in the detective bureau and 16 supervise patrol officers.

Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, said the administration should come up with the best ways to run the police department and that operating as it is now is not effective.

She pointed to the department’s struggles to hire and retain officers.

Police Chief Carl Davis, who was quiet during most of the discussion, said the way to attract officers is to “pay them more money.”

During the March 28 committee meeting when this issue was first discussed, Hughes invited the police chief to the main table for a discussion, but repeatedly stopped Davis from talking.

Davis said at that meeting: “As long as I’m chief of police here that will never happen.”

Also Thursday, Councilwoman Davis asked for a list of the police department’s city-owned take-home vehicles, who gets them and why. She has expressed concern about take-home cars in the police department for years.

She said more than half of the department’s officers get take-home cars, which provide a benefit for the officers but not for the city.

The police chief said Thursday he didn’t know how many officers have city-owned take-home cars.

Fritz said he didn’t believe there is a requirement in the police union contracts that certain officers get take-home cars.

Meanwhile, the committee had asked Fritz at the March 28 meeting for advice on the legality of a company being hired by the city to catch feral cats, spay or neuter them and then release them to help control the number of felines in Youngstown.

A company interested in the work, which would cost about $10,000, is concerned about a city ordinance that prohibits people from feeding stray cats — which is how it would catch the cats before having a veterinarian in a van do the surgeries.

Fritz said Thursday it wouldn’t be necessary to change the ordinance.

The city prosecutor could provide the company with a letter permitting them to feed the cats and that would allow the process to occur without violating the ordinance, Fritz said.

Councilman Pat Kelly, D-5th Ward, said he plans to have the company address city council soon to discuss the proposal.\