BOARDMAN — Township trustees will request a new levy in November to support police and fire services.

Officials say the township’s five-year forecast makes it clear that the cost to maintain services at their current level will become prohibitive. Those calculations do not include the roughly $204,000 Boardman stands to lose from its budget after Mahoning County Commissioners approved a resolution to increase the owner-occupied tax credit by 2.5% on Tuesday.

A document provided by Township Administrator Mark Ragozine shows Boardman will ask for a 2.75-mill levy that is expected to generate just under $3.8 million annually.

“That will be earmarked for safety services,” he said. “The biggest thing you have to consider is that, as appropriations grow, wages are always increasing. We are negotiating with six unions, and the wages go up and the cost of healthcare goes up year after year.”

Ragozine said that increase is usually anywhere from 12% to 20%.

The township also must contend with the rising cost of equipment, vehicles and other purchases necessary for maintaining operations and services.

Ragozine said, for example, that a ladder truck 12 to 15 years ago might cost $900,000. The same truck today may cost $1.8 million or more.

“We’re not asking for this to expand or offer additional services,” he said. “This will allow us to maintain the status quo and make sure our police and fire departments are staffed to the level Boardman residents have come to know and expect.”

He said the township has deferred some hiring in recent months, to account for the budget constraints. A statement from Fiscal Officer Brad Calhoun thanked the township’s department heads for helping to cut about $437,000 from the 2026 budget.

“Many of these reductions were achieved by postponing equipment purchases, capital improvements and other departmental needs rather than eliminating them altogether,” he wrote.

Despite that effort, Calhoun’s projections show that Boardman’s appropriations will outpace its revenues by nearly $867,000 in 2027, roughly $5.33 million in 2028 and as much as $8.86 million in 2031.

Calhoun and Ragozine note that Boardman has not obtained additional funding since 2011. The township did attempt to secure a 4.5-mill fire department levy in 2024 to generate $6.1 million for EMS services, but that effort failed by a 56% to 44% margin.

In 2025, the township failed to place a 2.5-mill current expenses levy on the ballot for renewal. Funds for that levy, originally passed in 1995, were collected in tax year 2025, but will not be collected in 2026.

County Auditor Ralph Meacham said the levy was worth $1.971 million annually.

Ragozine said this year’s request is not an effort to recoup those funds, because additional money likely would have been necessary anyway. He said that levy also was a general fund levy for operating expenses.

“The one thing we are really focusing on is if a levy is going before the public, it’s going to be specific,” he said. “It’s for police and fire, split down the middle. We’ll make sure the public knows these funds are safety service-specific — it goes to protecting the health and safety of the community. It gives us breathing room for a few years. We still may be running a bit of a deficit, and that’s the nature of it, with the cost of everything going up.”