AUSTINTOWN — The Board of Township Trustees will hold a special meeting this afternoon to discuss a personnel matter.

Most of the discussion will take place in executive session and the board will not take action afterward. Trustee Robert Santos said much of the discussion will be related to Fiscal Officer Laurie Wolfe’s office.

Santos said that in April, Wolfe appointed a clerk in her office to the position of assistant fiscal officer, with a salary of $95,000, an increase of about $2,800. But he said trustees asked her to put the hiring on hold.

“Laurie wanted to appoint Amy O’Brien to that position and pay her at that rate, which is within her purview, but the way Austintown is set up, we asked her to put it on hold to be sure everything is done correctly,” Santos said.

The problem with the hiring is not Wolfe’s authority to do so, but the fact that O’Brien’s current job as a clerk is a union position supporting the Ohio Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, a police union. O’Brien is covered by the union as a non-dues paying member, per the Janus v. AFSCME 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

“She’s a union employee, so her duties are union duties, and she can’t go to a non-union desk and take those duties with her,” Santos said. “We have to work with the union to see if they are willing to abolish that seat to make it non-union.”

Without abolishing the seat, the union could file a grievance against the township if the position remains unfilled after O’Brien’s move to her new job. Santos said filling the position would cost the township another $83,000 per year.

“So we, as trustees, are against that move because that’s not a good position to put our township in when we’re already reducing services to try to eliminate some of the tax burden on our residents and not come to them for another levy,” he said.

The township has made many cuts recently, mostly to the police department budget, which

in 2024 required $670,000 in transfers from the general fund, and could take $1.1 million to $1.4 million in 2025.

The township and department cut more than $150,000 from the police budget before November, when voters defeated a 2.4-mill levy that would have generated $2.6 million for police services. They have cut at least $70,000 more since, including abolishing the department’s police dog program, effective in July.

“That’s why we as trustees need to put everything on hold, and we are opposing this move until we get clarity from all interested parties,” Santos said.

Santos said the other concern is the way the township’s budget is set up. It does not include a line item for appropriations to the fiscal office like it does for zoning, roads and parks.

In mid-April, trustees sought advice from the Mahoning County Prosecutor Lynn Maro’s office about the hiring. Karen Gaglione, assistant chief of the civil division, told trustees that Ohio Revised Code does allow for Wolfe to hire an assistant fiscal officer, who must be bonded the same manner as the fiscal officer is. That person will also have the authority to execute the same duties as the fiscal officer, though it does not relieve the fiscal officer from fulfilling their own statutory duties.

The law also states that that person’s salary shall be “included in the contemplated expenditures for the township fiscal officer’s office that is submitted to the board of township trustees for approval … or in an appropriation measure passed [by trustees].”

Gaglione’s opinion also noted that an assistant fiscal officer cannot do union work, so the township would have to fill the position or abolish it, which requires the union’s approval.

“We’re not able to stop Laurie from executing her authority, but if she wants to do it this way, then the prosecutor’s office told us we need to establish a budget item for the fiscal office,” Santos said. “So, Amy’s pay was never discussed but it will increase appropriations and that requires a vote by this board. We will give Laurie her own budget and she will have to live within it. And we’ll have no control over how she does that as long as everything is done appropriately.”

Santos said today’s meeting is not for that purpose alone, and other financial and personnel matters may be discussed in the session that trustees want to sort out before the next regular meeting on June 2.