City cleans up zoning ordinance

By ROBERT CONNELLY

rconnelly@vindy.com

CANFIELD

City officials have approved changes to zoning and demolition ordinances, and fund-transfers to get a sewer project and a road project started.

No residents spoke at a public hearing on the ordinance changes before Wednesday’s council meeting, city Manager Joe Warino said. He added that the changes put in writing what the city has been doing for years, and clear up some of the language. Those changes take effect in 30 days and include things such as when a permit is needed and how much one costs for changes to a building or for demolition.

Two money-transfers were approved by council, the first from the street fund to the second phase of the North Broad Street upgrade project, $1,714, to close that project. The second was $14,841 from the storm-water operating fund into the Fairview Drive Storm Water Management Fund.

That project, the Fairview Avenue and Maple Street Stormwater Improvement Project, was approved at a cost of $193,084, and the work will be done by Ray Bertolini Trucking Inc., based in the Akron area.

The project was deemed an emergency so that funding would be awarded quickly “so they can start ordering immediately and not lose a month of construction,” Warino said.

Of the project, he said, “The city did an improvement about eight years ago and added additional pipe to Fairview, but didn’t increase the discharge to Maple.” The additional piping in the project will guide the water to the Indian Run tributary.

The city’s resurfacing program was approved at a cost of $231,385 and will be done by Butch and McCree Paving.

Officials also approved two paving and milling projects working with the Ohio Department of Transportation on U.S. Route 62 and state Route 46. Warino said that goes from “Dartmouth [Drive] to the city limits at the turnpike, and at the same time they’re doing that project, they’re going to repave all the remaining state routes in the city.”

A 14-inch waterline on Timber Run Drive has collapsed, city officials announced. “There’s about 625 feet of 15-inch pipe that is collapsed, and we will be needing to address that in the immediate future,” Warino said.

Mayor Bernie Kosar Sr. said, “It’s looking like about a $70,000 repair that we weren’t counting on.”

Council unanimously approved a resolution to support keeping the Corrections Corporation of America-operated Northeast Ohio Correctional Center on Hubbard Road in Youngstown and urged the Federal Bureau of Prisons to renew its contract to house federal inmates here. “Certainly we don’t want to see jobs leave the area and [we] support Youngstown’s actions to keep jobs in Ohio,” Warino said.

Kosar said, “I would hate to see them lose a contract and have those 400 jobs go elsewhere.”