Staff photo / Dan Pompili From left, Commissioner Geno DiFabio, Commissioner Anthony Traficanti and Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti applaud County Administrator Audrey Tillis at Thursday’s regular meeting of the board. She retired Friday after 13 years with the county. The commissioners, Sheriff Jerry Greene, and others took turns praising Tillis for her years of service and accomplishments. The commissioners gave her flowers and a proclamation honoring her career.

YOUNGSTOWN — After 13 years on the job, Audrey Tillis sat for her final Mahoning County Commissioners meeting on Thursday.

The county’s administrator and budget czar retired Friday, a little over a year since the board approved a retire-rehire package for her last March. Tillis, 66, said it’s just time.

“I don’t do anything unless I have the peace of God, and that’s where I am now. I always told everybody: ‘when I turn 65, I’m retiring’ and I stayed one more year,” she said. “Where the Lord takes me from here, only He knows that. I’m always open.”

Tillis said she is happy with what she has done and the position the county is in at the end of her tenure. She said it is up to the commissioners and the rest of her colleagues in Mahoning County government to keep it that way.

“We brought his county out of a really bad situation, and a really bad place. We’re stable today, and I have comfort in that when I leave here this county is in a good position,” she said. “We’re still vulnerable to changes at the statehouse. We can’t control that — it impacts us, and we then have to react again. But the reaction requires people to work together, not apart.”

She was hired as director of management and budget 13 years ago — the office now held by Jennifer Pangio — and then was promoted to executive director the board of Mahoning County Commissioners. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the board passed an emergency resolution to appoint her as county administrator and later made the move permanent.

Tillis came to Mahoning from Portage County, where she worked as an internal auditor and then in the office of management and budget at Kent State University, before spending several years as the executive director for budget and financial management in Portage County government.

Tillis interrupted that stint for a year, working in the Mahoning County auditor’s office from 2006 to 2007, then returning to Portage.

When she came to Mahoning County for good, she walked into a mess. The county had a $4 million budget hole, revenue was not supporting expenses and annual carryover was dropping fast, Tillis said..

“That was when a lot of the counties had issues, when a lot of things happened at the state level,” she said. “We worked together to seal that hole and put the cause out to the residents. The justice tax came out of that.”

The 0.75% tax was one of the first steps to filling the gap in the county’s finances.

“That allowed us to bring stability to the justice center and the courts, which supported the county as a whole.”

Tillis said she continued working with all public officials to reduce costs and establish reserve funds. Those reserves were built by being conservative with available funds and making the best use of one-time revenue streams.

When the state cut the sales tax that supported managed care organizations, it also gave counties a one-time payment to ease the transition.

“We put aside some of those funds for reserves and put some into justice,” she said.

Now, Mahoning County has AA ratings on both its jail and sales tax bonds, which relieves the obligation to buy insurance for them. The sanitary engineer’s office also has a stabilization reserve fund.

Tillis said she is not the only one responsible.

“Without everybody working together, we would not have been able to do the things we have done to keep the county stable,” she said. “County government is not simple.”

BIG PROJECTS

In her time, Tillis has worked with officials at all levels of local government to facilitate some big positive changes for Mahoning County agencies and residents.

By 2018, the county had consolidated its emergency dispatch centers, going from eight to three in Austintown, Boardman and the county jail. The transition also included a centralized computer aided dispatching (CAD) system.

“Their ability to work and communicate together has been enhanced and that has benefited them on multiple occasions,” she said.

Over the past year, Tillis has aided the Austintown-Boardman-Mahoning County Council of Governments as its communications committee planned and largely completed a transition to the state-operated MARCS radio system for emergency services, which will save the county about $1.3 million and reduce radio costs for most of the police, fire, and road departments that operate on the county’s dispatching system.

When Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti spearheaded the consolidation of mental health and social services that resulted in creating the Campus of Care, Tillis guided the county through the financial hurdles of establishing the 35-acre campus at the site of the former Youngstown Development Center.

A visibly emotional Rimedio-Righetti heaped praise on Tillis at Thursday’s meeting.

“In 54 years I’ve worked in government, I’ve worked with many people, but in my heart I have never worked with anyone with the integrity, honesty, respect, love of God and the loyalty,” she said. “She took us out from nothing to have a AA bond rating. And we have a surplus, and

we never had that, but we have it now because she had a vision for Mahoning County.”

Tillis also oversaw the distribution of $42 million in American Rescue Plan funds during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m very proud of how the agencies had the ability to help businesses all across the county, and how the county has been able to reach into villages and townships and cities,” she said. “It was a sad time, but it was a great example of something good coming out of something bad.”

Tillis lauded county grants manager Anna DeAscentis as well as agencies and nonprofits like

MYCAP, Catholic Charities, and the Mahoning County Board of Mental Health and Addiction for their work during the pandemic.

The county passed and distributed the 0.25% sales tax that has led to great improvements in roads and bridges.

“I think everybody has been good stewards of those dollars,” she said. “It’s allowed everybody to expand the dollars they get from other loans and grants, provided matching dollars for grants.”

At the same time the sales tax was increased, the cost of materials skyrocketed, Tillis said. The tax dollars allowed the county and local communities to overcome that hurdle and even do other projects they would not have been able to complete.

Tillis said officials at the County Commissioners Association of Ohio said they are unaware of any other county using its sales tax dollars the way Mahoning has.

VOICES OF PRAISE

Tillis is well-known for her spirituality and faith in God. And county officials emphasized that trait as they thanked her and wished her well on Thursday.

Former commissioner David Ditzler said he challenged her when he was first elected, after he learned she does not drink alcohol.

“I said ‘Audrey, if you can last four years with me and not need a drink, then you truly are a saint,” he said. “So, she lasted 12 years and I didn’t drive her to drink, so I think she truly is a saint.”

Ditzler said her cooperative and kind nature made her an invaluable asset to the county and the board.

“The most important thing about Audrey, to this county, to us, is that she is God’s servant. And she’s probably one of the most amazing people that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with,” he said. “She brought to this county credibility, stability, transparency, and trust, honesty.

Everything she did, she followed one rule and that was the rule of God.”

Sheriff Jerry Greene said Tillis was a security blanket for he and his staff.

“You get elected and you’re scared, because you don’t know county government…I don’t know numbers. I know police work. But we always had Audrey and she covered us,” he said. “I can’t tell this room, you have no idea how many times she has come over to our office and sat down with us, and made everything completely crystal clear for us.”

Greene said Tillis gave them the confidence and guidance they needed to make changes and improvements.

“If we wanted to carry out initiatives, we had Audrey. We wanted to regionalize our radio room which is so insanely complicated, and we had Audrey. I wanted to take on housing federal inmates, and said ‘how’s this going to work,’ and we had Audrey. I’m telling you when you go, and I hope it’s 100 years from now, you will be at the right hand of God.”

Newcomer to the board, Commissioner Geno DiFabio, said he understood very quickly how irreplaceable Tillis was when he first stepped into her office and saw stacks of files on her desk, heard the phones ringing and the email notifications coming in.

“Everybody was dependent on Audrey,” he said. “I think we’re gonna be ok, we’re gonna figure it out, but that’s gonna be a piece that’s missing. But you’ve put us in a place where we’re going to be able to carry on when you’re gone.”

DiFabio said Tillis made his first year in office easier.

“You were there to listen and to help me learn, and it’s a lot to learn,” he said.

Commissioner Anthony Traficanti, who spent 11 years in Washington D.C. under former congressman Jim Trafficant, said Tillis tops everyone he ever worked with in the federal government.

“Audrey, they could not compare to you. (You) could go down there and eat them alive,” he said.

“You hold your head up so high, with what you’ve done for this county. You’ve helped me figure things out when I had no idea how we would get to the end, and you gave us that path, that roadmap to success, and I want to tell you I’m going to miss you.”

Tillis said she is most proud to have been a facilitator and mediator between the commissioners, department directors and the residents.

“Just being able to speak as a voice that all sides could trust, and I do believe that people knew that when I worked on things I was doing it for the good of the community as a whole, for

what benefits Mahoning County. Having the ability to have that trust meant a lot to me, and hopefully and prayerfully I was a good steward of it.”

Tillis said she will take time to determine what’s next and will defer to the highest authority she knows.

“I’m praying about it, and I’m just taking it one day at a time right now. I need to just take a minute and step back and listen, and whatever He says I’m to do, I’ll do,” she said. “I never like to get ahead of the Lord. It’s a plan I can trust.”