Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Mahoning County commissioners have allocated $25,000 in federal funds for the Hope House Visitation Center on the city’s South Side.

The funding was arranged through the county’s Department of Job and Family Services.

Founded in 1999, the visitation house serves as a neutral site for exchanges of children between estranged parents and for supervised visits between parents and their children during family crises.

Carole Bopp, Hope House executive director, had appeared before the commissioners in April, saying the center was struggling financially after the county’s JFS department canceled its funding to the center in 2009, seven months into a two-year contract.

Located at 660 W. Earle Ave., Hope House is the only facility of its kind in a six-county area, Bopp said.

On Thursday, the commissioners used federal Community Development Block Grant funds to award a $56,366 contract to R.T. Vernal Paving and Excavating of North Lima for a resurfacing project this summer on North 14th Street in Sebring.

The commissioners also awarded a $9,124 contract to United Survey Inc. of Cleveland to reline about 320 feet of a cracked, 75-year-old clay tile sanitary sewer pipe under Mahoning Avenue, just west of state Route 46 in Austintown.

The cracks in the sewer have allowed ground water to flow into it, said J. Robert Lyden, county sanitary engineer. The job will be completed next month using the county sanitary engineering department’s maintenance fund.