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Atty Guglucello retires from city law dept, mayor to appoint Atty Farris
Published: September 1, 2011
Attorney Iris Guglucello has stepped down as law director for the City of Youngstown to retire. Mayor Charles Sammarone announced Anthony Farris, deputy law director, would be appointed the new law director.
“I have 30 years in public service, I’m 60 years old,” Guglucello said. “My husband (Roger Guglucello) retired so we could do other things”
One of those things is spending more time in Puerto Rico, where she was born and where the house that her parents left her and her sister is located.
Guglucello came to Ohio when she was 5 and her father, who came to Youngstown in 1950, worked for Youngstown Sheet and Tube’s Struthers plant.
When the plant closed in 1978, her parents moved back to PR in 1978 when she was in law school at The University of Akron. She earned her juris doctor from there in 1982, when she remembers doing all legal work by hand.
“That’s one of the things about doing legal research that has certainly been an improvement and a godsend, I think, to the practice of law is computer research.”
After law school, she returned to Youngstown and volunteered at the city prosecutor’s office, and then was appointed as an assistant county prosecutor for two years. She then worked for UAWGM legal services plant, then became a referee and later a magistrate in Mahoning County Domestic Relations Court.
Guglucello came to the city as assistant law director in 1998, working under director Robert Bush.
“I just got such a vast experience in the city,” she said. “I’ve been involved in purchasing and doing request for proposals for insurance, I’ve been involved in trying to keep the city’s worker compensation costs down. I’ve been involved in the risk aspect in trying to deal with safety issues in the city. We don’t have a personnel department…so I’ve been involved in grievances, arbitrations, firings¬–a lot of the things that normally a personnel department would handle.
“We have eight unions in the city that I have had to negotiate contracts (at different times of the year).
“It’s been a lot of work, it’s been enjoyable and challenging.
“Working for the city¬–this is the kind of appointment where there’s something different coming in the door everyday, so it’s not like you can really prepare because you don’t know what area of law you’re going to be doing.
“Since I’ve been here the city’s been sued by the EPA – for collections system for wastewater,” she said, adding the situation is not unlike all the other Ohio cities with ancient wastewater collections systems. Youngstown, she said entered a consent decree with the EPA in 2003, however most of the work needs to be done and the city is still negotiating with the EPA on what kind of combined sewer overflow system they’re going to put in.
Also during her tenure, a big subject of legislation was the city’s residency requirements for city workers to live in Youngstown. “It consumed a lot of municipalities time fighting that.”
“There would be dire consequences to the municipalities if that law were overturned,” she said, referencing the major decline in census numbers for Youngstown and how it is continuing to decline.
Guglucello herself lives in the city.