Beetles drilling through county office building

The bugs are a persistent pest and are making a small mess.
WARREN -- There's a growing arc of sawdust under the big desk that Trumbull County commissioners use for their public meetings.
The wood sprinkles have come and gone this year -- depending upon the frequency of vacuuming. They were especially noticeable during Wednesday's board meeting.
The flecks of wood dust are falling from lots of tiny holes in the wood, about the size of a pen point, made by wood-boring beetles.
The agenda was light; the bugs stayed busy.
Overstaying welcome
The county's year-long battle against these pests continues, to little avail.
Al DeVengencie, the county's building and vehicle maintenance manager, said the assumption is that these small insects had to be inside the wood before the desk was built.
One sure thing is that they're proving hard to get rid of, despite the advice of a professional exterminator. One ultimate solution could be stripping the wood, spraying it, then completely refinishing it, he said.
The oak desk which was custom-built on a dais in commissioners' fifth-floor hearing room some five years ago during renovations at the county building. Tiny beetle bore holes dot its front with dust trails to the floor.
They seem to like sunlight: The most dust is at the end of the table closest to the windows.
The commissioners, going about their business, approved a fund transfer of $9,842 to the Trumbull County Office of Elderly Affairs. This money will help pay the unemployment compensation for up to 26 weeks for three full-time and one part-time van drivers that the office had to lay off earlier this year due to a budget cut.
Also Wednesday, commissioners applied for $97,405 grant from the Victims of Crime Act for the Trumbull County prosecutor's Victim/Witness Division.
If the state attorney general's office doesn't provide the grant, the commissioners say they're not obligated to fund the program. The county's local share to match the grant would be $32,469.