Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner promised yesterday to clamp down on soaring overtime costs for city employees and admonished his top staffers for letting the situation get out of control.
"I am extremely disappointed in the directors of the city of Toledo and the staff of the 22nd floor," Mr. Finkbeiner said, referring to the floor of his office in Government Center.
"Some were doing business like in the old days when there was always a surplus."
Much of the overtime costs can be attributed to either nature or the mayor's administration.
After the harsh winter, the city's streets were riddled with potholes, and the city leaders were besieged with complaints.
So, the mayor in April promoted a plan to have scores of city employees work overtime to try to catch up with Toledo's backlog of potholes.
Snow also was partly to blame - as was an aging fleet that includes at least four broken down trucks a day, said Bill Franklin, the city's director of public service.
The situation is expected to be worse for May, for which figures were not available yesterday. That's when the trash pickup day for about 7,000 homes in three pockets of the city was changed with the number of routes being cut from 33 to 27 - which mandates more stops per route.
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