UPDATE: 08/14/2014 - 6:00 PM
(VIDEO)
ORIGINAL BLOG
The Stark County Political Report has learned that the Stark County commissioners today (barring a last minute hitch) will hire Canton building official and plans examiner Angela Cavanaugh to oversee Stark County's building department.
Immediately prior to yesterday's meeting of the Stark County Council of Governments (SCOG) executive committee, Healy lashed out at yours truly for having erroneously reported Cavanaugh's imminent departure for the county job.
Notwithstanding Healy's denial, The Report stands by the report of Cavanaugh's pending departure from the Healy administration.
It has to be more than a bit galling for Canton mayor William J. Healy, II to lose yet another one of his top officials in a very short span of time because, in this particular situation, the official is going to work for Healy's chief political antagonists.
See this excerpt from her resume a copy of which was obtained by The Report from the Stark County commissioners:
Note that during her time with Akron, Cavanaugh had been hired by Healy's predecessor (Janet Creighton).
Cavanaugh has these further resume elaborated qualifications:
Two of the three commissioners have had a highly adversarial relationship with Healy; namely, former Canton mayor Janet Creighton and former Canton service director and chief-of-staff Thomas Bernabei.
Healy defeated the Republican Creighton in November 2007 in her bid for re-election. After she left office, Healy has repeatedly trashed Creighton in saying that she left city hall in a terrible mess.
When Healy took office in January, 2008 one of his first hires was former Canton law director and former city councilman Bernabei.
However, the mayor was unable to abide Bernabei's strong hand of leadership and fired him on January 26, 2009.
Healy's best bet at being a successful mayor would have been to have kept Bernabei and the likes of former Safety Director Tom Nesbitt and the recently resigned Safety Director Warren Price on board with his administration.
As far as the SCPR is concerned, Healy continues to slide Canton into a deeper and deeper hole from which - when he is no longer mayor - it will take years and years to recover from.
A clue that Healy was having trouble retaining Cavanaugh surfaced on last night city council meeting agenda under the communications section. As seen in the graphic above, Warren Price (whose last day with the Healy administration is slated to be August 31st) was on the agenda shown to be requesting legislation to give Cavanaugh a 3% pay increase.
A Canton councilperson tells The Report that Cavanaugh was last making $118,000 (benefits included) with Canton. So a 3% raise would have amounted to about $3,000 annually. That the raise request was withdrawn says one of two things. Either Cavanaugh was not going to be staying; raise or not. Alternatively, the votes were not there on council for the raise to pass.
Giving pay raises seems to be the only way that Healy can stop the flood of exits from his sinking ship administration.
Back in May, Healy had to offer Finance Director Joseph DiRuzza (who formerly worked for Kim Perez when Perez was Stark County auditor) a 14.5% pay raise to keep DiRuzza from "jumping ship" for Portage County.
No doubt that Cavanaugh will find working for the commissioners to be a much more productive environment than working for the beleaguered William J. Healy, II.
It is the citizens of Canton that are being buffeted by and, in the opinion of yours truly, harmed by the topsy-turvy world of its mayor.
There appears to be a mass exit going on from the administration of William J. Healy, II.
Given all the controversy that has surrounded the mayor almost from day one of his taking office, there is very little guessing at to why that might be, no?
It seems that no one wants to be working for the mayor these days.
For to do so is more and more taking on trappings of trying to do so is to be embarked on "Mission Impossible!"
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