'We don't skip roads,' Mahoning engineeer tells commissioners

YOUNGSTOWN

Despite complaints about county road conditions this winter, Mahoning County Engineer Patrick Ginnetti said his department is doing the best it can within its limited budget and road salt supply.

“Our crews have been on every road. We don’t skip roads. We don’t miss roads,” Ginnetti told the county commissioners Thursday. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have.”

With salt prices having risen 532 percent since last year from $27.50 to $146.18 per ton, the county cannot afford to treat roads with 100 percent salt, and instead uses a 3-1 slag to salt ratio with a liquid de-icer made from sugar beets and molasses.

With a total annual operating budget of about $10 million, his department could not afford to pay $1.61 million for the 11,000 tons of salt it bought in previous years, he said.

If it did, there wouldn’t be any money left for patching potholes, which are proliferating because of constant freezing and thawing, nor would there be any money for paving, roadside mowing and ditch maintenance or bridge repair, he said.

“The storm that we got Super Bowl night (Feb. 1) was an ice storm. Once those roads froze up, we had a couple of inches of ice on the road,” he recalled, adding, “It is very difficult to get that off” the roads."

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.