Trustee: Working together is key

By Ed Runyan

The meeting lasted only 20 minutes.

CANFIELD — Township Trustee Randy Brashen says it’s no longer important that a judge has ordered the township and city to sit down together to talk about forming a joint economic development district.

What is important now — and what Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court told the parties last year while they were negotiating settlement of the lawsuit the township filed against the city — is that the two parties work together.

On Wednesday, the parties held the third meeting so far to see whether they can form a JEDD in the township to help promote business development there. The 20-minute meeting ended after the parties agreed that they couldn’t make any more progress until the Canfield city engineer, Gary Diorio of MS Consultants, provides some cost estimates to run waterlines and sewer lines into areas south of the Canfield Fairgrounds.

The meeting did accomplish one thing, Canfield Law Director Mark Fortunato said: By looking at topographical maps, the parties confirmed that the land south of the Canfield Fairgrounds slopes downhill at a pretty rapid pace.

That means that any sewage that might need to be carried north to the nearest water and sewer connection at the Canfield Fairgrounds will have to be pumped uphill, probably with the use of pump stations, they agreed.

The parties — four Canfield City Council members, two township trustees and Fortunato — agreed that such a method of moving waste won’t be cheap.

The parties plan to meet again in late April or early May — after Diorio provides some dollar amounts.

Brashen and Fortunato explained that Ohio law allows the parties in a JEDD to purchase land, develop it with utilities and offer it to a company to use for commercial development.

Trustee Bill Reese has said he hopes that a JEDD will be successful in attracting small businesses and warehouses to the township.

Canfield Mayor William Kay said the city is interested in anything that will “stimulate the economy.” He noted that the city has the utilities and the township has land to develop, so it makes sense for the two parties to work together.

runyan@vindy.com