YOUNGSTOWN — Thanks to three Youngstown councilmen allocating $200,000 of their wards’ American Rescue Plan funds, the city will get 59 license plate recognition cameras with usage starting around November.

Of the cameras, 56 of the cameras will be stationary and three of them will be moved with those latter three used primarily to find those who illegally dump items in the city, said police Lt. Mohammad Awad, chief of detectives.

The cameras, from Flock Safety, are free, but they come with a $3,000 annual licensing fee for each, Awad said. Also, there will be installation charges, he said.

The city’s board of control plans to sign a two-year contract with Flock Safety so if there is any money remaining after the licensing and installation costs, it will go toward paying a portion of 2025’s licensing fees, Awad said.

The 2025 licensing fees for 56 cameras will be built into the police department’s budget with the cost for the other three coming out of the litter division’s budget, he said.

City council voted 5-1 Wednesday to use the ARP funds from the three council members for the cameras. The board of control has to approve the purchase.

Councilman Pat Kelly, D-5th Ward, is using the remaining $160,000 from his ward’s $2 million ARP allocation toward the purchase of the cameras.

Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, gave $25,000 and Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, gave $15,000.

In April 2022, council voted to give $2 million in ARP funding to each of its seven council members for projects in their wards.

Councilwoman Anita Davis, D-6th Ward, was the lone no vote against the ordinances.

Davis, a retired Youngstown police detective sergeant, said the license plate readers “get every single car that goes by the cameras whether you did anything wrong or not and it stays there for 30 days. I’ve always been very leery of privacy. This is a privacy issue. Government will have access to it when they want to.”

Oliver said the license plate readers will help the police department solve crimes.

The cameras will come 60 days after the contract with Flock is signed, Awad said. The street department will need to install some of the cameras, he said.

If all goes well, the cameras should start to be in use by November, Awad said.

“I’ve been pushing for this for two years,” he said. “I want them up today.”

INVESTMENT

Council voted 6-0 Monday to put $10 million of its $82.78 million ARP money into the general fund to give the city more time to use it while it collects interest.

Council on April 6, 2022, appropriated $3,930,400 in ARP funds into the general fund for the replacement of lost revenue in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Department of Treasury has updated its formula for lost revenue during the pandemic and now allows municipalities that received at least $10 million in ARP funds to presume that up to $10 million in revenue was lost, said city Finance Director Kyle Miasek.

Miasek said he would take $3.3 million of that money and put it into a six-month treasury note or certificate of deposit that would generate $81,000 in interest, another $3.3 million into a 12-month note or CD to get $153,000 in interest, and $3.4 million into an 18-month note or CD to get $223,000 in interest.

That $457,000 in interest would go directly into the general fund, he said.

Also, the money could be rolled over into other notes or CDs once the original investment time has passed, Miasek said.

This not only generates interest for the city, but Miasek said by taking the money out of the restricted ARP fund, it will allow the city to use the money for a longer period of time. Current ARP rules require money to be earmarked by the end of this year and spent by the end of 2026, he said.

“My concern is that we could run into an issue where we’d have to return funds and the last thing that I want to do is to see the administration or council have to answer to the public that we didn’t spend these funds wisely,” Miasek said.

Because the money is being converted to general fund revenue, it eliminates that provision to have to earmark by the end of this year and spend by the end of 2026, Miasek said.

With this decision, council will have about $1.5 million to $2 million of unallocated ARP money left.

Oliver said: “This is a wise way to utilize this money. I am in agreement with this.”

The city invested about $40 million in unused ARP funds in treasury bills that generated about $1.1 million in interest for the second half of 2022 and all of 2023, Miasek said.

Other council members’ ARP allocations approved Monday were $150,000 from Anita Davis for an Uptown Market Street facade improvement project and $120,000 from Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, for the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership to provide plumbing and home repairs to low- to moderate-income residents.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown sponsored legislation to spend $54,587 for life vests, lifeguard chairs and other supplies for lifeguards at the city’s North Side Pool.

OTHER LEGISLATION

City council voted Monday to rescind resolutions on four moratoriums, approved at the June 20 meeting, on permits and licenses for new recreational marijuana businesses, dollar stores, car dealerships and auto repair shops until May 1, 2026. Council then voted on four separate ordinances adopting the same moratoriums.

Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, said the law department advised council to rescind the resolutions and pass them as ordinances to eliminate any confusion.

Council voted to authorize the board of control to pay $63,000 for engineering consulting work to monitor the demolition of the Realty Tower downtown. The city hired MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown for that work.

Council also voted Monday to pay $609,180 to Schindler Elevator to replace the Youngstown Police Department’s elevator that broke a few weeks ago.

It will take 15 months before the new elevator is up and running, said Kevin Flinn, the city’s buildings and grounds superintendent. It will take 12 months to design the project and get parts and then another three months to install it, he said.

Police Chief Carl Davis said the department is looking at options for some of those who work on the upper floors including relocating them or having them work from home.

Have an interesting story? Contact David Skolnick by email at dskolnick@vindy.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.