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Richard A. Marsico retires Jan. 6 after 16 years as Mahoning County engineer
YOUNGSTOWN
Richard A. Marsico, who retires Jan. 6 after 16 years as Mahoning County engineer, cites as accomplishments numerous road and bridge improvements, together with improvements in the efficiency, productivity and discipline of the engineer’s office.
When he took office in 1997, the department had a shortage of trucks and other equipment, which he remedied early in his first term, Marsico recalled.
When he assumed office, the department had a staff of 177, which he reduced to 129 by June 1998. Today, the office has 71 employees. Most of the reduction was achieved by not replacing those who resigned or retired, but some occurred through layoffs.
With an annual budget of about $12 million, the department is responsible for maintenance and snow and ice removal on nearly 500 miles of county roads.
“At least 90 percent of the roads have been either reconstructed, repaved or improved with chip and seal,” during the past 16 years, Marsico said.
His office has secured more than $80 million in federal and state grants for Mahoning County projects during his four consecutive four-year terms in office.
“It’s been a long, rewarding career. I’ve enjoyed my engineering career,” Marsico said, adding that he intends to continue his educational requirements to maintain his engineering and surveying licenses.
Among his proudest accomplishments, he lists the widening of South Avenue from two to five lanes between Presidential Drive and Western Reserve Road in 2002 and 2003 and the widening in recent years of Western Reserve Road between Hitchcock Road and U.S. Route 62.
The 2008 rehabilitation of the 1949-vintage Fallen Firefighters Memorial Bridge, formerly the Spring Common Bridge, in downtown Youngstown, was another major project that received five federal, state, local and historic preservation awards.
Other projects during his tenure were the replacements of the Center Street, Walton Avenue, Jacobs Road and Shields Road bridges and the U.S. Route 224 bridge over Yellow Creek.
Yet another accomplishment, Marsico said, was the county’s 2003 drainage and erosion-control manual, which requires developers to use various erosion and flood control measures, including stormwater detention ponds to control runoff from a once-in-a-century rainfall.
Marsico said he still stands by his controversial decisions in 2011 to give $34,486 in pay raises to five professional engineers, which he said were justified by their assumption of additional construction management duties, and to convert $35,755 worth of boot, clothing and cellphone allowances into the hourly pay of 23 nonunion employees, whose wages had been frozen two years.
As Youngstown’s deputy director of public works between 1984 and 1997, Marsico said he is proud of a $65 million upgrade and expansion of the city’s sewage- treatment plant, widening and redesign of Federal Street and improvements to runways, taxiways, aprons and hangars at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
In his earlier private engineering practice, Marsico worked on interstate highway-construction projects and on the development of the General Motors Complex in Lordstown and Warren area Packard Electric facilities. During that time, he was also village and city engineer in five communities.
During his retirement, Marsico, 78, who lives in Boardman, said he plans to pursue the woodworking hobby that he credits with steering him toward engineering as a profession.
“I figured, after all the years that I’ve worked, it was time to retire and start doing a little bit of traveling and tinkering and enjoying life,” he said, explaining why he didn’t seek re-election this year for a fifth term in the $99,209-a-year job.
In January 2012, Marsico withdrew his re-election bid after the county’s Democratic Party central committee voted by a 68-percent margin to endorse Patrick Ginnetti for the party’s nomination.
Marsico said the vote “surprised and disappointed” him, but he endorsed Ginnetti and promised to assist in the transition to a new engineer.
Ginnetti, who was making his first bid for political office, then cruised into office unopposed in the March Democratic primary and the November general election.
Randall Partika, the department’s bridge engineer, described Marsico as “very honest, very willing to listen to new ideas and try to do what’s best for the public as far as maximizing [the benefit from] our use of tax dollars.”
Partika has worked for the county engineer’s office 27 years under three county engineers, Michael Fitas, William Fergus and Marsico.
“He’s turning over a well-run office,” to engineer-elect Ginnetti, Partika said.
“It’s in real good shape. I think we have a carry-over of over $1 million,” from 2012 to 2013, and an experienced staff, Marsico concluded.