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Mahoning commissioners supporting food bank’s stimulus-funds application
YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County commissioners have passed a resolution in support of the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley’s application for $320,000 in federal- stimulus money to build a 2,500-square-foot addition to the food bank.
The addition would be used for storage and cleaning and repackaging of donated food.
Located at 2805 Salt Springs Road, the food bank provides commodities to 165 soup kitchens and food pantries serving needy people in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties.
Last year, the food bank distributed 6.2 million pounds of food, including 2 million pounds of fresh produce, the commissioners’ resolution said.
“We have a shovel-ready project,” Michael Iberis, food-bank director, said of the proposed expansion.
The food bank has outgrown its 20,000-square-foot facility at a time of high unemployment and growing demand for its services, Iberis told the commissioners Thursday. “We’ve tried two years in a row for federal earmarks, and we’ve been rejected both times,” Iberis said.
“This is a pandemic that we’re seeing, particularly in this economic climate with double-digit unemployment,” Anthony T. Traficanti, chairman of the commissioners, said of hunger in the Mahoning Valley.
The commissioners also exercised their option to approve a final year of a four-year contract with Health Professionals Ltd. of Peoria, Ill., for 2010 at $143,543 per month for health care for county-jail inmates. The contract covers inmate health care inside the jail and in a hospital, if necessary.
The contract covers medications for inmates and the services of personnel who provide the care, including a physician, a dentist, a psychiatrist and 22 nurses.
The contract amount is about $8,000 a month more than this year’s amount due to cost increases, including salary increases for nurses and the medical staff, said Robert Knight, jail health administrator. At the end of 2010, the commissioners must seek bids for a new jail medical contract, Knight added.
“It’s a lot of money, but it’s based on the minimal [state] standards for a jail,” Knight said. All health-care expenses for county-jail inmates are paid from the county’s general fund, which is its main operating fund. The county’s jail population varies between 500 and 550 inmates.
The commissioners also accepted from St. Joseph Health Center in Warren the donation of a $90,000 electrically operated movable record-storage system to be installed at Oakhill Renaissance Place and used by the clerk of courts and other county agencies.
The system features compact shelving units that move on tracks at the touch of a button.
The system will help the office of the clerk of courts store old court-case files at a time when it is running out of record-storage space, said Scott Grossen, clerk of courts administrator.
“It allows us to have efficient storage of records in all kinds of forms, whether it be in boxes, or whether it be actual file folders,” Grossen added.
milliken@vindy.com