AUSTINTOWN — The township ended 2025 on sound financial footing, officials say, despite a tumultuous year marked by concerns about the police department budget.

At this week’s meeting of the Board of Trustees, Fiscal Officer Laurie Wolfe delivered a preliminary end-of-year summary of expenditures, which show the township transferred only half of what it anticipated out of the general fund.

Overall, general fund transfers in 2025 exceeded 2024 — roughly $845,000 in 2025 compared with $797,000 the previous year — but the general fund was only used to support three departments and the expected transfer of about $1 million to the police department was cut in half.

“Police cut their expenses by about 8%,” Wolfe said. “It took a lot of hard work, but it was well received. And just know that, at the beginning of the year we’re not going to go right back out and return to full spending. We’re still going to be cautious and just purchase what is absolutely necessary.”

Before and after voters defeated a 2024 police levy, the department had begun cutting costs — as much as $150,000 before the levy was shot down and roughly another $100,000 since.

Cuts to the department budget have meant pulling officers back from the Mahoning County Drug Task Force and Mahoning County Human Trafficking Task Force to maintain adequate patrol staffing; doing the same with many detectives; cutting training and equipment costs; eliminating overtime as much as possible; and deferring cruiser replacement and some maintenance costs. The department also cut its police dog program, which was supported through the end of the year by donations.

The township also renegotiated dispatch contracts with most outside communities the center serves to bring those communities’ costs more in line with the annual average per-call cost and to remove what they said was a disproportionate financial burden on Austintown’s police and fire departments for dispatching.

Wolfe said the passage in November of a new five-year renewable 2.22-mill levy that will generate about $2 million for the department does not mean Austintown will be lax with its budget in 2026.

“This year we ended well, and thankfully we have the police levy that will help us end well next year,” she said.

While she said departments may not be able to get all their biggest hopes and dreams, the township will try to help them work toward those, while ensuring they get everything they really need.

“There are grants that come along throughout the year, and if it’s not on our radar then we don’t know to go for it, so I like to know their big hopes and what they’d like, and then just what they really need for forecasting.”

The parks department also was down a full 10%, Wolfe said.

“I know we kind of put the reins on doing a whole lot at the park until we found out what the police levy was doing, because that levy is really old and only produces so much, so even to have employees out there is above the levy,” she said. “So we really try to be cautious about what we spend with the park, so we cut some overtime, we increased some fees, and I think that really helped.”

The Austintown Senior Center’s costs went down about $40,000, or about 11%.

“We did some things a little bit differently, and I know some of the money at the end of the year for the renovations probably hasn’t been paid out yet,” Wolfe said. “But we always love to see that, because the senior center does live within its levy, but we need to continue that.”

Among the other departments, roads also performed well, cutting its expenses by 1%.

“I know [Township Administrator] Mark [D’Apolito] was being really frugal, not purchasing any extra equipment just because we were all preparing for the police levy. If it had failed then we needed to make more cuts everywhere else as well.”

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

While expenditures overall were down townshipwide, some departments did exceed their 2024 spending, although Wolfe noted there was generally good reason in each case.

The fire department’s expenses increased about 5%, but Wolfe and Fire Chief David Schertzer noted the year was somewhat out of the ordinary.

“We purchased some property, we paid on one of the fire trucks, so it’s just not a normal increase,” Wolfe said. “But 5% overall really isn’t that bad, it’s less than the inflation rate.”

Over the summer, the department purchased a parcel of property directly next to the main fire station on state Route 46, which sat idle for many years. Schertzer said the space would give the department room if the station required expansion. At the time, the possibility of an ambulance bay was mentioned. The purchase cost about $32,500.

The most significant single line item for the year was a $237,455 payment, the first of 10 to be made for a new ladder truck, which replaced a unit that has been in service since 1994. Another payment is due on March 5. Schertzer said the truck will serve the township for 30 more years.

The other cost the department incurred was for the replacement of radios that would not make the transfer to the new MARCS emergency communication system. The Austintown-Boardman- Mahoning County Council of Governments approved the transition to the state-run system, which will save costs in the long run and provide greater flexibility and cohesion among the county’s emergency services, allowing them to communicate seamlessly, locally and statewide.

However, some of the radios were outdated and would not work on the MARCS infrastructure.

Schertzer said the township had to spend $61,251 for 14 new mobile units in the department’s vehicles, and $67,346 for 10 new portable units, which cost more because of the complex technology that allows firefighters to carry them into active disaster scenes. The costs included installation and programming.

As part of the agreement for the MARCS transfer, though, Mahoning County will be reimbursing Austintown for most if not all of that cost. Scherzter said the reimbursement simply was not reflected in the year-end numbers.

The department also incurred $32,000 in unexpected costs from responding to the Nov. 22 explosion at the Phoenix House senior living center, which D’Apolito explained also spilled over into police and communications.

Repair bills added to the spending hike, he said, as did training a new fire inspector to replace Capt. Rick Milliron, who retired Dec. 31.

Personnel costs also contributed to the Zoning Department’s 45% spending increase. With Zoning Inspector Darren Crivelli’s retirement pending, the township hired Dominic Moltchan to work under him for the year, adding $75,000 to the department’s costs.

But Wolfe explained that zoning funding is a fickle budget to manage because the department’s only source of income is from permits and other fees, all of which were considerably down from 2024.

“In 2024, they received more so they were self-sufficient, and in 2025 they received less so they required transfers from the general fund,” she said. D’Apolito also pointed out that 2024 was somewhat of an anomaly because of the fees zoning received from the new Meijer store.

Wolfe said the township’s maintenance fund is managed as an offshoot of the general fund, monitored separately only so they can track salary and other costs. That fund’s expenditures were up $20,000, but that accounts for an employee replaced that was not there in 2024.

“They’re also doing a lot more township work which helps all the departments,” she said.

Communications is also an offshoot account, generally managed under the police department but maintained separately.

The communications cost for 2025 was up $8,000 — or less than 1% — which represents a considerable success for the township.

At the end of 2024 and into the beginning of 2025, the township renegotiated its contracts with the roughly two dozen other communities for which it provides dispatching services, in order to bring their per-call costs in line with the average, and reduce the burden on the township’s police and fire departments whose per-call costs were disproportionately higher than the average. Those negotiations, along with renegotiating the dispatching union contract, accounts almost entirely for the $500,000 Austintown did not have to transfer to the police department from the general fund this year.

“The general fund ended with about $7,000 more than it started with last year,” Wolfe said. “Everything looks to be well. By the end of March, we’ll know final results from 2025 and where we’re going in 2026.”