By SHELLEY TERRY - Staff Writer - sterry@starbeacon.com
ASHTABULA — Contrary to a promise made on a radio show Wednesday morning, the city manager did not take a pay cut and give back his raise by the end of the day.
The story he told listeners about where he was and what he was doing when he was “missing in action” during Tuesday’s Finance and Personnel Committee meeting didn’t check out, either.
City Manager Anthony Cantagallo told a radio audience he would go to the city auditor’s office and take a 10 percent pay cut and give back his 3.5 percent raise by 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, but he didn’t do it.
Cantagallo said he missed the committee meeting because he was in negotiations with the city’s unions, but the three union representatives said it wasn’t so.
Cantagallo did not return the Star Beacon’s phone calls.
Cantagallo has taken heat for cutting city services, like snowplowing city streets, to help reduce the city’s anticipated $862,000 deficit this year.
The city manager, who makes $75,369 a year, also received a 3.5 percent raise recently and did not take the 10 percent pay cut he talked about at last month’s council meeting. City Council members, as well as several City Hall employees, have taken 10 percent pay cuts to reduce the deficit and have frowned publicly on Cantagallo’s reluctance to do the same.
Cantagallo told the radio audience he was using the raise as a bargaining chip with the unions.
“I said, ‘Why don’t you (take a pay cut or revoke the raise) now?’” WYBL FM 98.3 radio personality Roger McCoy said. “He said he would.”
City Auditor Michael Zullo said Cantagallo never showed up Wednesday.
As for the city manager being missing in action for Tuesday’s Finance and Personnel Committee meeting, he told McCoy he was in negotiation with city unions, McCoy said, and that was more important.
Lee Mendrala, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ Local 1197, said he met with Cantagallo before Tuesday’s committee meeting at City Hall. Then, Mendrala and two other union members went upstairs at City Hall at 9 a.m. to attend the committee meeting, expecting to hear the city manager’s plans for restructuring the city, but Cantagallo didn’t go upstairs for the meeting.
Neither the police nor the firefighters union was meeting with him during that time, either, union representatives said Wednesday.
Firefighter Shawn Gruber, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters’ Local 165, confirmed no one from IAFF negotiated with Cantagallo Tuesday. Sgt. John Koski confirmed no one from the Fraternal Order of Police Local No. 26 negotiated with Cantagallo Tuesday.
Council Vice President Betty Kist, who also chairs the Finance and Personnel Committee, placed the “Restructuring-City Manager” item on the agenda, fully expecting the city manager to have attended the meeting. He usually attends the meeting but gave no indication he was not going to be there, she said.
AFSCME members attended the committee meeting, as well as the police chief, two officers and the fire chief, after they heard that during a broadcast Saturday morning, Channel 3 TV reporter Jeff Maynor said Cantagallo said as many as a dozen layoffs of city employees are possible this week. Kist said city employees are on edge after the TV broadcast. Clerk of Council LaVette Hennigan said people at City Hall were talking about it.
The police also attended Tuesday’s meeting because they had an important issue on the meeting agenda: a buyout plan for officers nearing retirement age. As it turned out, the committee met for an hour in executive session and didn’t come to a decision on the buyouts because the city manager wasn’t there. The committee will meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday with full council, the manager and city solicitor to discuss the matter further, according to city officials.
