Trustees seek information on three areas for funding

By Mary Smith

A new communications tower tops the trustees’ list for possible grants.

MINERAL RIDGE — Weathersfield Township trustees have pinpointed three areas they want the township’s new grants coordinator to look for funding.

Trustees hired Atty. James J. Pirko in the summer as a grant-writing and research and development consultant at a rate of $1,000 a month.

Trustees have asked Pirko to look first at funding for a new radio tower for police and fire use to replace a tower owned by Armstrong Cable on Four-Mile Run Road, township Administrator David Pugh said.

The new tower would be 185 feet high and located at the township administration building on Prospect Street.

Pirko said he must get the engineering in place on what the project will entail and then put it out for bid.

The new communications tower for police and fire would be a broadcast tower, which Pirko said would be a “six-figure project.”

The new tower will be for the township’s police and fire “repeaters,” which re-send an original signal out to individual hand-held radios at a higher, louder frequency.

Pugh said township radio equipment is operating on an analog signal and needs to gradually move over to digital to bring equipment up to date. The township has time to make this changeover, he said. What the township will actually be able to do will “depend on the type of grant we are able to find,” Pugh said.

There has not been funding available in the police or fire accounts to make any upgrades, Pugh said, because budgets have been so tight over the past few years.

The second area trustees want Pirko to check into is installation of new waterlines. There are a handful of small areas in the township that still do not have a waterline to tie into, including Austintown Road, Hughes, McDonald and Woodland avenues.

These would be smaller projects, Pugh said, which sometimes makes it much easier to find money for them.

The funding offered for waterline and sewer projects from the U.S. Department of Agriculture is for unincorporated areas.

Pirko noted that if voters pass limited home rule, which is on the Nov. 4 ballot, that will make the township eligible to be the primary sponsor of water and sewer projects.

He also noted that the township has received about $6.3 million in grant funding since 1982, most of which went into waterline, sewer and storm sewer projects or roads.

He said the funding was handled by the Ohio Public Works Commission (the old State Issue 2) and Community Development Block Grants through the Trumbull County commissioners.

Pirko explained that part of the reason he was hired was to help with the township’s rating by the Insurance Service Office, a nonprofit organization that rates the township for insurance rates based on fire-protection services.

He said some fire hydrants in the township do not have adequate pressure, and these water pressure-related problems on one side of the township set the standard for all of the township as far as the ISO is concerned.

The third area Pirko will pursue is economic development. Pirko, however, said he is looking at the potential for a major development of dormant and polluted industrial sites in the township, which he would not specify.

He said it is dependent on the Nov. 4 passage of the Clean Ohio Fund ballot issue, which is designed to clean up sites just like the one he is talking about.

He said he also has been working with the township Beautification Committee on another project along the lines of the amphitheater in Warren.