LORAIN — If the city can’t find additional revenue and employees refuse to take a pay cut, as many as 39 city workers will be laid off, Safety Director Phil Dore said Thursday.

The city sent letters Wednesday to the city’s five bargaining units asking whether those workers would consider taking a 7 percent paycut to offset a projected $530,000 shortfall for 2009. That’s on top of 2008’s $1.3 million deficit.

So far, the dispatchers have said no to the pay cut, Dore said, adding the other four bargaining units haven’t yet responded.

City officials plan to meet with all five units Friday.

Read Friday’s Chronicle for more on this story.

LORAIN — Police announced Thursday they are upping to $5,000 the reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the shooting deaths of two Lorain teenagers, as well as the city’s other unsolved homicides.

“Hopefully, this will get us some more information,” said Sgt. Mark Carpentiere.

The reward is per case.

“The cost is being born by the Lorain Police Department and the Lorain County prosecutor’s office,” Carpentiere said.

Christopher Hill, 16, was shot in the face June 22 while sitting in a car parked on Long Avenue at West 18th Street. He died the next day in a Cleveland hospital.

Marquis McCall, 18, died at the scene after being shot in the chest June 22 during a drive-by at West 13th Street and Long Avenue. Seventeen-year-old Craig Roberson was shot in the leg.

“We haven’t gotten much helpful information at this point,” Carpentiere said. “We’re hoping more people will contact us at this point.”

Police are hoping surveillance video that captured four suspects shortly after McCall’s murder will lead to identifying the people responsible for what police have called a “revenge” slaying for Hill’s shooting.

Police believe the shootings were spurred by territorial issues — south side versus west side — and have said McCall and his friends were not specifically targeted but were shot for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

People can leave information anonymously, however, if they want to receive a reward, they will have to identify themselves at some point, Carpentiere said.

Christopher Lundberg, 35, of Lorain, was shot near West 29th Street and Ashland Avenue and died Feb. 4 in what police believe is a drug-related crime. Two men were arrested in that case, but Carpentiere said it’s still under investigation.

Georgino Melendez was gunned down inside his Packard Drive home Oct. 5.

To share a tip

Anyone with information on Hill’s murder is asked to call Detective Steyven Curry at (440) 204-2105 or (440) 204-2100.

Anyone with information on McCall’s murder is asked to call Detective Buddy Sivert at the same numbers.

Contact Alicia Castelli at 329-7144 or acastelli@chroniclet.com.

Surveillance video of individuals believed to be involved:

ELYRIA — An Avon woman whose 3-month-old daughter died last year after she was found not breathing in her mother’s bed has been charged with endangering children.

Ault

Melissa Ault, 29, was arrested Monday after being indicted by a county grand jury last week.

The baby, Delaney Powell, was found the morning of April 3, 2008, lying face down in her mother’s bed at Ault’s Elizabeth Drive home.

Paramedics gave Delaney CPR and she was rushed to Avon Emergency Care Center before being flown to MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, where she was pronounced dead.

Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will said Delaney’s death spurred the investigation into Ault.

“Her condition at the time of the baby’s death was something that violated the duty of care,” he said.

Will said Ault’s actions put Delaney at risk, but he wouldn’t comment on the details of what the investigation revealed.

“They were obviously issues of an endangering nature,” he said.

If convicted of the charge of endangering children, Ault could receive up to five years in prison. Will said that if the evidence had shown that Ault had caused Delaney’s death, she would be facing more serious charges.

Last month, Ault was convicted of theft and identity fraud in an unrelated case in county Common Pleas Court stemming from charges that originated in Avon Lake Municipal Court in December, court records show. She received three years probation.

She also was convicted of DUI in Avon Lake Municipal Court in March of last year, according to court records.

Ault is being held in the county jail on a $15,000 bond.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com and Adam Wright at 329-7129 or awright@chroniclet.com.

GRAFTON — The new warden at Grafton Correctional Institution promised more community notification in the future after a mock prison break training exercise at a home on state Route 83 stopped traffic and worried some motorists Tuesday.

The prison sent a fax to media outlets on Friday alerting them to the training exercise, but that apparently was not enough notification, said Warden Frank Shewalter.

In the future, prison officials will follow up with phone calls and targeted e-mails, he said.

Plus, they might erect better signage for the public warning of a training exercise in progress.

Shewalter said there were signs for northbound and southbound motorists on state Route 83, but a Chronicle photographer saw only a sign for northbound motorists that stated “GCI Exercise Scenario in Progress.”

The activity by about 100 armed individuals — mostly prison guards and officers from the Ohio Highway Patrol — got the attention of passersby, who called The Chronicle-Telegram. No one at the paper recalled any fax about a training exercise.

En route, a newspaper reporter called police and discovered it was only a training exercise. After arriving, the reporter and photographer noticed telltale signs of training in progress — such as the sign, the fact that state Route 83 was not closed off and the use of some pink-colored weapons.

Two women who had called the newspaper said they thought there was a hostage situation in progress as they passed by the Grafton Prison Farm.

“There were lots of people who didn’t know what was going on,” said Johni Russell, of Lorain, who was passing with her mother Carol Knapp.

Russell said some motorists stopped their cars in the middle of the road and turned around to avoid trouble while others were caught in lines of cars when trains were stopped on a nearby rail crossing.

Knapp said if there was a sign going southbound, she didn’t see it.

“We thought we were going to see a shootout,” said Knapp, who tuned into WEOL and called her husband to see if there was anything else in the media.

Despite a little confusion on the part of passersby, Shewalter said the Critical Incident Management exercise was a success and trained staff from the Grafton Correctional and Lorain Correctional institutions and the Northeast Pre-Release Center in Cleveland, which is a women’s prison.

“We learned how to do better working as a team,” Shewalter said. “We train on this so we can be ready and the community will be safe.”

Shewalter, who previously served as warden of the Northeast Pre-Release Center, said the training exercise focused on the following scenario:

A resident alerts the prison of two empty tractors and a vehicle in the field, and a guard who responds is taken hostage and moved to a farmhouse across the highway. Five “inmates” take part in the walk-away from the prison farm — which does not have a fence around the perimeter — after one of the five was denied a visit to the bedside of his mother, who is ill. During the training exercise, the guard taken hostage was critically injured along with a girlfriend of one of the inmates, while a second girlfriend was killed and two inmates were shot in the legs as they ran toward a radar facility on prison grounds.

The confusion on the part of some passersby during the exercise Tuesday is not the first time in recent years that the public has been affected by training exercises.

On Aug. 25, people in the 128-home Deerfield housing development off Oak Point Road were asked to evacuate after Lorain police conducting training exercises with new gas masks fired off pepper spray at the nearby Amherst Gun Club that wafted into their homes.

Fifteen months ago, three police training drills for Virginia Tech massacre-type violence were canceled until police sorted out what went wrong on July 12, 2008, when two veteran police officers walked into the Stocker Arts Center with guns drawn. The incident happened just prior to a performance of “Willy Wonka Junior” by the Lorain County Children’s Pioneer Theatre.

During the incident, the theater’s treasurer was reportedly placed at gunpoint because police thought he was part of the training scenario. After the incident, he called Mayor Bill Grace and Elyria Police Chief Michael Medders to voice concerns.

Contact Cindy Leise at 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.