Officials to discuss city police patrols at TMHA properties

Council will also discuss privatizing the city's garbage collection.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- An ordinance that would authorize continued additional city police patrols at properties owned or managed by the Trumbull Metropolitan Housing Authority is scheduled for introduction during Wednesday's city council meeting.
The ordinance, sponsored by Councilman Alford L. Novak, D-2nd, says the city agrees to accept a $75,000 donation from TMHA to continue the patrols through June 30.
The ordinance says the patrols are needed to protect city residents against drug trafficking and the violent crime that accompanies it. Novak said the police patrols are also designed to curb trespassing on housing authority properties.
The security arrangement between TMHA and the city began last spring after the Trumbull County Sheriff's Office rescinded its contract with TMHA because of county budget cutbacks and layoffs. Initially, the housing authority provided the city with $50,000 toward the housing security effort.
Trash study
Also to be introduced Wednesday is an ordinance, sponsored by James "Doc" Pugh, D-6th, that would authorize hiring an engineering firm to study the feasibility of having a city-owned solid waste transfer station.
City Councilman Gary Fonce, D-at large, noted that competing proposed ordinances are also forthcoming, one to have council privatize the city's residential garbage collection, and the other to put the privatization issue before the voters.
City employees now collect garbage in city-owned trucks and take it to the Warren Recycling Inc. transfer station, where it is loaded onto larger trucks to be taken to Browning-Ferris Industries' landfill in Poland.
Acting upon the recommendation of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, the city health board has proposed denial of WRI's 2006 transfer station license. But the WRI facility continues to operate pending a final decision by the board.