Trustees apply for grant for street safety upgrade

By Mary Smith

Approval of a second police levy would have brought back three officers.

MINERAL RIDGE — Weathersfield Township trustees will submit an application for a $180,000 grant for the first phase of a safety upgrade on Seaborn Street.

The work would be paid for through the Ohio Public Works Program’s 2009 Issue 1 project funds.

The trustees, at their Tuesday meeting, also designated MS Consultants Inc. of Youngstown as project manager. The township’s share of the grant would be $25,680 if it is approved next year by the Ohio Public Works Commission.

The Seaborn work is part of a planned three-phase project to include sidewalk repair, new sidewalk installation, and road upgrades on Seaborn and Union streets, which border Mineral Ridge High School.

Project plans are to improve the roadway around the high school and extend sidewalks past the first 300 yards at the top of Seaborn, which runs in front of the high school.

The plans include correcting Seaborn, widening and repaving it all the way down the hill, and correcting curbing and repairing drainage.

The second phase would be to install sidewalks on Union Street, which runs behind the high school, as well as widening the road, curbing it, paving it and installing drainage. Plans are to extend sidewalks to Depot Street, which already has sidewalks.

Atty. James Pirko, township grants coordinator, also said the Trumbull County sanitary engineer has applied for funding under the public works program for installation of a sanitary sewer line on Gilbert Street, off state Route 46, just south of Salt Springs Road.

The total project cost would be $345,573, and the county is seeking $50,000 of public works money in 2009 with plans to finance the remaining $295,573.

Police Chief James Consiglio attended the meeting and thanked the community, particularly local businessmen, for their outpouring of support for two police levies on the Nov. 4 ballot.

One levy passed and one levy failed in the general election. A 3.7-mill levy to generate $317,530 on a continuous basis failed. A second levy, combining a 1990 police and EMS levy to generate $394,474 on a continuous basis, passed.

Township officials said if the first levy had passed, the township would have rehired three full-time police officers to fill open slots on the force to bring the manpower up to 11 officers.

There are currently eight full-time and six part-time officers on the force, including the chief and Capt. Joseph Naples.

In other business, trustees:

U Authorized the township administrator to spend $15,000 for demolition of seven houses within the township’s jurisdiction. Wolford’s of McDonald will do all the work, administrator David Pugh said, since the company submitted the lowest bid.

UApproved a resolution for a supplemental police services agreement with the Trumbull Metropolitan Housing Authority, effective July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009. Police officers work by the hour at a rate of $20 an hour to provide security in the Orchard Court Apartments complex of about 50 apartments.