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Western Reserve Road repaving set
YOUNGSTOWN
Just over a mile of Western Reserve Road, which was badly damaged by the harsh winter that ushered in this year, will be repaved between Hitchcock and Tippecanoe roads this year, the county engineer announced.
The work, which involves removal and replacement of asphalt, likely will be done in September and is estimated to cost about $980,000, said Patrick Ginnetti, county engineer.
The county commissioners are advertising for bids for that job. Bids will be opened at 1:30 p.m. Aug. 19 in the county purchasing office.
“The road fell apart after this past winter,” Ginnetti said.
A widening project on Western Reserve Road will take place between Hitchcock Road and Market Street in 2019 or 2020 at a likely cost between $6 million and $8 million, he said.
After that, in a final phase, Western Reserve Road likely will be widened between Market Street and South Avenue, he added.
That phase will be “the most challenging and most difficult” because the right-of-way there is narrow, and the county will have to acquire considerable additional land for the widening, Ginnetti said.
In other county business Thursday, Bill Coleman, office manager in the county sanitary engineer’s office, said no calculations have yet been made concerning what, if any, long-term sewer user rate increase will have to be imposed on the county’s customers to pay for the county’s $32 million share of $147 million in required city sewer improvements.
“Right now, we don’t have all the information to perform a viable calculation,” he said.
Financing the county’s share of sewer-system improvements to be made through 2033 could be a complex matter involving state and federal funding and county borrowing, he said.
The county’s goal will be to pursue federal and state grants to minimize the burden of improvement costs on sewer users, Coleman said.
County sewer-user rates already are scheduled to rise an average of 5 percent annually through 2019 under a rate increase the commissioners approved last December.
The county’s sewer system connects to the city’s at eight locations, and the county pays the city $2.5 million to $3 million a year to treat county sewage at the city’s Poland Avenue plant.
The project will upgrade the city’s sewage-treatment plant and eliminate combined storm and sanitary sewer overflows that discharge into Mill Creek Park.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency attributed a massive Lake Newport fish kill to city CSO overflows due to heavy rains in late June.
Mill Creek Park’s lakes Newport, Cohasset and Glacier have been closed to recreational use since July 10 due to high E. coli sewage bacteria counts as reported by the county board of health.
Linda Macala, county convention and visitors’ bureau director, told the commissioners that tourism here is getting a major boost this weekend from the downtown Greater Youngstown Italian Fest, the Steel Valley Cluster dog show at the Canfield Fairgrounds, and the Mahoning Valley Olde Car Club’s Sunday show at Boardman Park with the James Taylor concert to follow Monday at the Covelli Centre.