MAHONING COUNTY Road paving to set record

The engineer's office made sure roads in the southern part of the county are included in the program.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County officials say this will be a record-setting year for paving county roads.
Engineer Richard Marsico said he will spend $2.4 million to pave nearly 50 miles of road, both of which are records.
The numbers surpassed last year's totals of $1.9 million to pave 42 miles of road, which were records at the time.
Fourteen townships are slated for road repair, including Smith, Goshen, Green, Beaver and Springfield, which line the county's southern border.
"We tried to spend some money in the southern end of the county because they've been neglected a lot over the past 10 years or so," said Marilyn Kenner, chief deputy engineer. She said all the roads in the paving program were requested by the townships.
Slated to start soon: All roads will be resurfaced with two inches of asphalt and three bridge decks will be sprayed with waterproofing solution. Bids are being accepted for the projects and work is expected to start in mid-May, Kenner said.
Springfield Township Trustee Thomas Kerr agreed that the southern townships have historically been overlooked and he appreciates the way Marsico tries to spread pavement all over the county.
"I've seen years when we were lucky to get a mile paved, if that," he said. "And the quality of the work was questionable."
He said the problems were during the administration of Marsico's predecessor, William P. Fergus.
Marsico defeated Fergus in 1996 to take over the office. After Fergus left office he pleaded guilty to federal charges of racketeering. Fergus admitted accepting bribes from the mob and extorting money from paving contractors seeking to do business with the county. He also harassed contractors who did not pay kickbacks for paving work, and did not enforce paving standards for contractors who did pay kickbacks, authorities said.
Kerr said Marsico took political patronage out of the paving program.
"I think he does an excellent job of selecting the roads," he said.
Efforts recognized: Marsico was honored by the county Trustees and Clerks Association last year for his practice of seeing that as many townships as possible are included in the paving program.
Hilda Spack said the county's annual paving program became a string of broken promises in Goshen Township, where she is a former township clerk.
For years, trustees were promised that an especially bad section of Seacrist Road, between Garfield Road and U.S. Route 62, would be repaved, but it never got done. She said residents continually asked when it would ever be repaved.
It's on the list this year, though, along with other parts of Seacrist Road in the township.
"Thank God," she said. "We had a really good road and then the county just let it go to the point that now it's horrendous."
Kenner said the aggressive paving program is possible largely because of revenue county commissioners set aside from a 0.5 percent sales tax expressly for road projects. Marsico has said he expects it to be about $650,000 this year.
When commissioners campaigned for passage of the tax in 1999, they pledged to set aside 5 percent of its revenue for road work, said Gary Kubic, county administrator.
"We now believe that promise has been kept," Kubic said, noting that the need for road improvements was the major complaint commissioners heard from residents while they were stumping for the tax.
The tax money is in addition to funding the county gets each year from the Ohio Public Works Commission, Kenner said. Marsico also puts money from his own budget into roads each year. This year he will spend about $700,000 on resurfacing, Kenner said.
"We want to put money back into something the public can use, not personnel," she said.