City paying $1.4M to pave streets
By DAVID SKOLNICK
YOUNGSTOWN
The city is paying $1,454,408 to a Girard company to pave 80 streets, primarily in residential neighborhoods.
Diorio Paving, the company hired by the city for the street improvements, will begin the job in mid- to late June, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of the city’s public works department. The work should take 75 days to complete.
This is Diorio’s first time doing the city’s annual summer street-paving project.
Diorio’s proposal was the least expensive among the four companies seeking the work. One of the other companies was Shelly Co. of Twinsburg, which did the city’s street paving work the last four years.
The 80 streets are equivalent to 29.2 lane miles, Shasho said. A lane mile is one mile long and 12 feet wide, he said.
The city is spending about $300,000 more on this summer’s street-paving program than last year, and is improving 23 more streets than last year in an effort to have a larger impact on residential streets this year, Shasho said.
None of the money for the work comes from the city’s general fund, Shasho said. The general fund is facing a $2 million shortfall between its anticipated revenues and expenditures.
Most of the money for the paving will come from a federal Community Development Block Grant and the city’s $5 motor vehicle license tax fund. Also, about $167,000 will come from the city’s water and wastewater budgets because a portion of the project includes grading water valves and manhole covers.
There will be other street improvement work in the city, Shasho said.
“It’s a busy summer,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”
Youngstown received about $816,000 from the federal-stimulus package for two improvement projects to main gateways into downtown.
The city is using $416,000 to resurface and make improvements to catch basins on Glenwood Avenue between Mahoning and Falls avenues. The city anticipates hiring a company for that work by July.
A $400,000 project to resurface East Federal Street from Walnut Street to the Crab Creek overpass, just west of Wilson Avenue, should be done in a week or two.
During the summer, the state Department of Transportation will hire companies for two improvement projects with a total cost of about $1.3 million to $1.5 million, Shasho said.
Those projects are: Mahoning Avenue from Meridian Road east to the Interstate 680 overpass, near the Frank Sinkwich Bridge; and Canfield Road from Meridian Road to Arden Boulevard.