Officials: Road repairs getting done

By Peter H. Milliken

Officials: Road repairs getting done

There are more potholes than there is money to patch them, an official says.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County officials say they’re doing everything they reasonably can to repair roads, which have been heavily damaged this winter.

“We keep up the best we can. This is the worst winter we’ve had in years,” said Mark Buccilli, office administrator with the county engineer’s office.

The engineer’s road maintenance crews must interrupt their pothole patching, however, to do snow and ice removal when a winter storm occurs. Sometimes they can’t patch the potholes because, under wet conditions, the patching material won’t stay in the holes, he told the county commissioners Thursday.

To help perform road improvements this year, the county engineer’s office will use a $950,000 Ohio Public Works Commission grant, he said, adding that a $520,000 zero-interest OPWC loan will be used to improve Bailey Road.

“There’s more potholes than money,” available to patch them, said George Tablack, county administrator.

The county officials made their comments in response to a complaint from John Paulette of Austintown about the poor condition of local roads, notably Crum Road in Austintown.

“They’re terrible. They are absolutely worse than I’ve ever seen in my whole life as long as I’ve lived in this county,” Paulette told the commissioners.

This winter’s constant freeze-and-thaw cycles have worsened the pothole problem, Tablack noted.

He said the commissioners have told the county’s recycling division to double its spending for repair of landfill haul roads this year from its planned $250,000 to $500,000 to address the problem on those roads.

The commissioners asked for the extra money for that purpose this year “because the haul roads are in need of more maintenance, basically due to the weather conditions over the last couple of years,” said Mari Wren-Petrony, assistant director of the county’s recycling division, known as the Green Team.

Each year, the Green Team spends some of the money it receives from landfill waste dumping fees for maintenance of roads used and damaged by heavy trucks hauling waste.

Last year, the Green Team gave the county engineer’s office $500,000 for haul-road repair. Because of reduced landfill dumping fee income, it had only budgeted $250,000 for that activity this year until the commissioners requested the increase, she explained. The extra money will come from the Green Team’s $1.5 million in reserves, she added.

The amount of waste dumped in local landfills and the fees the Green Team has collected have declined recently because of increasing recycling, a downturn in the economy, and high fuel prices, which have induced haulers to dump waste in landfills closer to its source, rather than hauling it a long distance, she explained.