Ironton City Council faced a standing-room only crowd of police officers, their families and supporters Thursday for the first reading of an ordinance to accept the city’s 2000 budget.

Friday, February 11, 2000

Ironton City Council faced a standing-room only crowd of police officers, their families and supporters Thursday for the first reading of an ordinance to accept the city’s 2000 budget.

That budget includes departmental cuts responsible for the Monday layoff of five Ironton Police Department officers, four of whom were hired on depleted federal grant funding.

Supporters expressed concern over the reduction in officers and the increased response time the layoffs will cause.

"I am acutely aware of the roll of police protection in schools," Ironton High School principal Larry Stall told council members. "In light of incidents like Columbine, it’s important to have a responsible police force with a responsible response time. The Ironton police have helped us with a myriad of situations that have come up and it has been very comforting to have the force that we have. It is concerning to see those numbers depleted."

With recent plant closures costing the city an estimated $250,000 in annual revenues, city officials said Monday they are unable to pick up the officer’s salaries.

"I think it is safe to say all the comments in regard to the police department falling on sympathetic ears - I don’t think there is a member of council that wants to see department cuts of any kind if it can be avoided," councilman Joe Black said. "I feel that with our current staffing on the police force that that is probably where we should be and it’s where we want to be."

Cutting the department is not an action council has considered lightly, Black added.

"As the principal of the high school (Stall) stated, any crisis we have in the city we want our citizens to be protected," he said. "We’re going to have additional council meetings and finance committee meetings to address this situation. We are charged with a very heavy responsibility to deal with these budget issues, but we’re going to look at possible ways to address them."

Despite state law requirements that specify the city must have an annual operating budget in place by March 31, council members did not suspend the rules and give the budget ordinance a second and third reading Thursday – an action that would have allowed a vote if six out of seven council members agreed to the rule suspension.

Instead, council chairman Jim Tordiff told audience members the group will continue having budget workshop sessions and encouraged the public to attend. A date for the meeting has not yet been scheduled.

"It is encouraging to see so many people in the audience and we appreciate the concern and support over the decisions that are being made," Tordiff said. "We have had one budget workshop session and we will have more. I would encourage the audience members and citizens to come back to the budget work session because it is at those types of meetings that you become much more privy to those types of details and become much more learned about things that may seem like they have an obvious solution but which may, in fact, not have an easy answer."

Neither council nor the city administration is viewing the layoffs as permanent, Ironton Mayor Bob Cleary said.

"The budget workshops are something we have every year when we are putting together the permanent budget, which is revised throughout the year," Cleary explained. "These layoffs are not something we are looking at as permanent, but rather we will continue to work diligently and explore every possibility that could return these officers to work in providing police protection to the residents of Ironton."