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Mahoning engineer: Roads not skipped in winter
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. We got a lot a lot of freezing rain. Once those roads froze up, we had a couple of inches of ice on the road,” he recalled. “It is very difficult to get that off” the roads, he said.
Ginnetti said seven of his 21 trucks serving 485 miles of county roads have been out of service for major repairs.
His three newest trucks are 2011 models, and the remainder range from 1990 to 2007 vintage, he said.
“I have an aging fleet. This time of year is exceptionally hard on our vehicles,” he said.
Ginnetti said his department’s operations are funded entirely by fuel tax and motor vehicle license plate fee revenues, and his department receives no sales tax or real estate tax funds.
Fuel tax revenue has declined in recent years because high fuel prices and more energy-efficient cars cause people to buy less gasoline, he explained.
“We know you’re doing what you can do. We see your crews out there. It’s tough,” Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the commissioners, told Ginnetti.
The engineer made his remarks after Tony Bettile of Canfield complained county roads were still snow and ice covered five days after the Feb. 1 ice storm. Bettile said hilly Raccoon Road was especially icy, causing four cars to leave the road.
The commissioners bought $99,600 worth of hot cold mix at $125 a ton from Central Allied Enterprises Inc. of Canton through the state’s cooperative purchasing program for temporary pothole repairs. “It a little better than cold mix, but it’s not a permanent fix,” Ginnetti said.