Officials decry paltry federal road and bridge funding

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The Mahoning County engineer and commissioners are decrying the amount of federal money the county has received for road and bridge infrastructure projects in recent years.

At the request of Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the commissioners, Engineer Patrick Ginnetti compiled a list of projects, for which a total of $25.1 million in federal money has been received since 2009.

“When it costs roughly $1 million a mile to do one lane [of complete road reconstruction], that’s not very much money,” Ginnetti told the commissioners last week.

“The monies just aren’t available as they used to be. We have to be way more planned and organized” now than in the past, Ginnetti said.

“There’s not a lot of federal dollars coming this way. It’s not political. It’s not anything against us. There’s just not a lot of money out there.

“This is a nationwide problem. You have bridges collapsing. You have roads failing, potholes popping up everywhere,” the engineer said.

Read the full story by Vindicator Staff Writer Peter Milliken on Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.