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5 demolition contracts awarded
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County commissioners awarded the five final contracts — totaling $411,508 — in a demolition program designed to remove blighted structures from local communities.
On Thursday, they awarded three contracts totaling $225,951 to Siegel Excavating LLC of Edinburg, Pa., and two contracts totaling $185,557 to Neapolitan Contracting of Struthers.
The 150 structures to be demolished under these contracts are in Campbell, Struthers and elsewhere in Mahoning County.
The commissioners were facing an Ohio Department of Development-imposed Tuesday deadline to award the contracts.
These contracts are part of a $2.9 million award to Mahoning County for demolitions funded by federal neighborhood-stabilization money.
To be funded by the neighborhood-stabilization program, demolitions must occur in areas with a low- to moderate- income population and high housing-vacancy and foreclosure rates, and the structures to be razed must be blighted, said Annemarie DeAscentis, the county’s grants manager.
Also discussed at the commissioners’ meeting was a back-to-school-oriented, federally funded gift-card giveaway program for clients of the Department of Job and Family Services, in which the cards will be distributed to eligible families from 7 a.m. to noon Saturday at Oakhill Renaissance Place, 345 Oak Hill Ave.
Distribution will be in person only. JFS will not mail the gift cards.
The cards, worth $175 per child, will be given only to the 3,400 clients who have received letters of eligibility, and they may be used only for children’s clothing and only at J.C. Penney stores in Austintown Plaza and Southern Park Mall.
JFS clients must bring their gift-card eligibility letters and the envelopes containing them and photo-identification cards to JFS on Saturday morning to receive their gift cards, said Judee Genetin, JFS director.
“These people are the poorest of the poor,” Genetin said of those who’ll be receiving the cards.
Helen Youngblood, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2001, which represents JFS employees, complained that union members, who determine client eligibility, weren’t given the information they need about the gift-card program to enable them to respond to inquiries from clients.
Genetin said, however, she e-mailed that information Monday to all JFS workers who needed to be informed about the gift-card distribution.
The commissioners’ next scheduled meeting will be at 10 a.m. Sept. 9 in the county courthouse basement.