HUD awards $3.1M for county’s efforts to control lead hazards

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development official has awarded a $3.1 million, three-year grant to continue the efforts of Mahoning County’s lead-hazard-control office.

The award was presented by Douglas W. Shelby, director of the federal agency’s Cleveland office, at Thursday’s meeting of the county commissioners.

“They have contributed nationally to a reduction of 75 percent in lead poisoning among our young people” in the last 18 years, Shelby said of the county’s seven- member lead-hazard- remediation staff.

“Every dollar that we spend as a government gives us somewhere around $17 back in benefits,” Shelby said, referring to reduced illness and medical costs and improved school performance among children.

Lead poisoning, caused by lead paint, is linked to attention deficits and other neurological impairments to learning, said Phil Puryear, program director for the county’s Office of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control.

The grant, which is $100,000 higher than previous HUD grants to his office, will make 195 homes lead-safe, Puryear said.

In other action, the commissioners approved a $6,000 sponsorship grant from hotel-bed-tax revenues to the Ohio Athletic Committee for this year’s Ohio state boys’ wrestling championships the second and third weekends of March at the Covelli Centre.

Phil Moore, county convention and visitors’ bureau director, said the event will fill about 1,000 hotel rooms here each weekend.

Moore told the commissioners he is “quite confident” the event will return to the Mahoning Valley in 2012 and 2013.