Thursday, February 10, 2005
This year's allotment for District 6 totals about $7 million.
AUSTINTOWN -- Members of the two-county District 6 Public Works Integrating Committee will decide Friday what projects to recommend for state Issue 2 funding.
Committee members met Wednesday and scored the projects based on their regional impact. This year's Issue 2 allotment for Mahoning and Trumbull counties totals about $7 million. Joe Warino, Mahoning County sanitary engineer, who chairs the committee, said the district's allocation has remained near the $7 million mark the last several years.
Of that money, about $3 million in grants is for water, wastewater and storm sewer projects, about $2.5 million in grants is for highway and bridge projects and $708,000 is loans for a variety of projects.
Grants requested total more than $14 million and requested loans total about $3.1 million.
Eastgate Regional Council of Governments will review the scores and the projects, ensuring that each meets funding requirements. William Totten, Warren's director of engineering, planning and building and vice chairman of the District 6 committee, said that each project must meet a 20-year useful life to be approved.
Topping the list
Of the 64 funding requests, a water tank improvement project at Mahoning Valley Sanitary District ranked the highest.
Tom Holloway, MVSD engineer, said the project calls for replacing a tank, called a standpipe, built in Niles' Stevens Park in 1930 with a reservoir. The total cost of the project is $1,547,291 and MVSD requested a $350,000 Ohio Public Works Grant with the bulk covered by local funds.
Holloway said when the tank was built it was the only tank in the city.
That tank serves water customers in Niles and parts of Howland, Weathersfield, Girard and Liberty with the possibility of adding customers of other communities.
"It's a good project that has regional impact," Holloway said.
Other projects
Another project scoring well was resurfacing of West Market Street in Warren between Main Street and the city's corporate limit. Totten said it's a $2.6 million Ohio Department of Transportation project with a grant request of $472,000 eyed for the local match.
The Gypsy Lane water and sanitary line improvement project in Youngstown and phase 2 of sanitary sewer improvements in Weathersfield's McKinley Heights also earned high marks.
The Gypsy Lane project totals about $445,320 and requests $307,271 a loan. Carmen Conglose, Youngstown's deputy director of public works, said the project involves extending city water and sewer lines west of Belmont Avenue on the Youngstown and Liberty sides of Gypsy.
"There's some vacant land there with development potential," he said.
Construction of the 711 connector and access ramps at Gypsy Lane precipitated the project, Conglose said.
Gary Newbrough, Trumbull County sanitary engineer, said the McKinley Heights project stems from an Ohio Environmental Protection Agency mandate for the county to correct a health nuisance caused by off-lot septic systems in the area. The McKinley Heights project is one of 21 areas the OEPA mandated the county to address because of health concerns from septic systems.
The first phase, recently completed addressed the commercial development and intersections of U.S. Route 422 and state Route 169, Robbins Avenue.
The sanitary engineer is requesting $500,000 in a OPWC grant for the $2.6 million second phase of the project. That phase includes sanitary sewer connections to 154 homes.