ECONOMIC PROJECT Trustees to team up with business

Monday's meeting will be to elect officers and get things started.
By TIM YOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
LIBERTY -- Township trustees will be partnering with the business community to help spur economic development.
The first meeting of the Liberty Township Community Improvement Corp. will be at 5 p.m. Monday at the township administration building.
"This is new territory," township Administrator Patrick J. Ungaro said, noting Liberty is the first township in the state to form a CIC.
Ungaro said the CIC will serve as a tool to help lure development to the township.
The CIC is needed, Ungaro explained, because townships are prohibited by state law from using township funds to buy land for economic development. Even with a CIC in place, he said, it's still cloudy if it can use local township funds to buy land for speculation.
"It's not like a city buying and selling land," as Ungaro noted he was able to do when he was mayor of Youngstown.
"The township has no power to do those sorts of things," he explained. "It makes it much more limited."
Local money, Ungaro explained, may have to run through a second corporation and be restricted to marketing aspects of development. But he noted the CIC has more flexibility in using county, state and federal grant money for land purchases.
Other ways the CIC can obtain land for the township, the administrator said, are seizing tax-delinquent parcels and through eminent domain.
What's planted
Monday's meeting will be a nuts-and-bolts session with the election of officers, hiring an attorney and accountant and naming a bank to deposit money.
"We're trying to see how we can better do things," said W. Gary Litch, trustee chairman. "Hopefully, we can bring in a larger tax base and continue to provide [township] services."
What the township lacks, Ungaro said, are water and sewer lines and the ability to market its best features.
He called attention to immediate access to Interstate 80, state Routes 11 and state Route 7/11 Connector when it's completed and proximity to the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
In addition, the township has a lot of virgin land, especially to the north along Belmont Avenue and Tibbetts-Wick Road. The township, Ungaro said, is ripe for a high-tech industrial park.
The township is spending $300,000 on engineering for the construction of water and sewer lines near the Route 7/11 interchange at Gypsy Lane.
Ungaro said the interest in township development is the highest its been since he was hired in 2002.
"But some people don't like development. Those are the challenges we want to overcome," he added.
yovich@vindy.com