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Elections board prepares for move
The agencies remaining in the Mahoning County South Side Annex, 2801 Market St., which eventually will be moving to Oakhill Renaissance Place, 345 Oak Hill Ave.:
County recycling division, known as the Green Team.
County board of elections.
Clerk of courts’ auto title and passport divisions.
Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force.
County health department adult day-care center.
Source: Mahoning County
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County’s architectural firm estimates renovations necessary to accommodate the county board of elections at Oakhill Renaissance Place will cost $158,000 to $175,000.
Tracie A. Kaglic, project manager with Olsavsky-Jaminet Architects Inc., presented the estimate Thursday to the county’s building commission. “Their requirements are pretty much leaving the space as is,” Kaglic told the commission.
The board of elections will move later this year from the county’s South Side Annex on Market Street to the first floor of Oakhill near Entry A, Kaglic said.
Her estimate is based on the need for wall-patching, painting, cleaning and installation of new flooring, ceilings and electrical outlets and a new counter in the new 9,300-square-foot board of elections office at Oakhill.
Pete Triveri, county facilities director, proposed that the work could be done in eight weeks by recalling some of the six county maintenance workers who were laid off about a month ago.
“Maybe we can put this money in my budget, and we can do this ourselves, in-house,” Triveri told the commission.
The recalled workers would be paid from the county’s capital project fund, said George J. Tablack, county administrator.
Architect Raymond J. Jaminet said he plans to advertise Aug. 3 for bids to demolish Oakhill’s landmark 75-foot-high smokestack. He estimated that job will cost $150,000 to $165,000.
The stack no longer serves any purpose because Oak-hill gets steam heat from Youngstown Thermal and no longer uses its own boilers, Kaglic said.
Kaglic said she hopes the county’s recycling division will move from the annex to the third floor of Oak- hill’s west wing in six to eight weeks.
Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which the county bought in 2006 for use as an office complex for government agencies and nonprofit organizations.
In the county commissioners’ meeting that followed, the commissioners approved an 18-month extension of a memorandum of understanding for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1156, which represents county maintenance workers.
The union members already ratified the extension, which runs through the end of 2011.
The memorandum, which was first approved by the union and management last year, contains concessions, including an unpaid floating holiday for each worker every two weeks and abolition of uniforms and uniform allowances.
The commissioners also bought $76,140 worth of land from 11 owners for next year’s widening of Western Reserve Road between Tippecanoe Road and U.S. Route 62.
The two-lane road is now 22 feet wide, with no shoulders. It will be widened to 32 feet, including 4-foot shoulders on either side.
The commissioners’ next meeting will be at 1:15 p.m. Wednesday at Angels for Animals, 4750 W. South Range Road (state Route 165) in Beaver Township.