Inmates to help patch potholes

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Day-reporting inmates supervised by Mahoning County deputies once again will help the county engineer’s crews patch potholes.

This year, however, the work will be done with the consent of Teamsters Union Local 377, which represents the county engineer’s road-maintenance employees.

Last year, that union filed — and later withdrew — a grievance over the use of free labor from the day-reporting inmates performing the work as part of their sentences.

A rotating crew of four day-reporting inmates will work on the project beginning Monday for up to three months, said Patrick Ginnetti, county engineer. A county engineer’s office truck driven by an engineer’s office employee will carry the patching material.

The inmates report daily to the sheriff’s office for a work detail, in which they perform a variety of public-service projects, but do not stay overnight in the county jail.

“It’s a tremendous savings to my department because that gives me an additional crew, for free, basically to help us,” Ginnetti said.

“The roads have blown up this year. This is the beginning of my third year [as county engineer], and this is the worst I’ve seen our roads,” he said of the pothole problem.

“We have all hands on deck right now trying to treat the potholes, and it’s simply not enough. There’s not enough time in the day or people to address all of the issues we have right now,” he said. “We’ve got between five and six crews out patching daily.”

The county engineer’s office is responsible for maintaining 485 miles of county roads.

Use of the inmates won’t take jobs or compensation away from current county employees, said Kristin Barrett, special projects coordinator in the county engineer’s office.

Rich Sandberg, Local 377 president, said, “I probably would have consented last year if Pat had approached me earlier.”

When Ginnetti began using the inmates last year, he changed the working conditions for Teamsters without discussing the matter in advance with union leadership, Sandberg explained.

This year, Ginnetti approached Sandberg in January to discuss the matter, Sandberg said.

The extreme weather and pothole problem this year made this arrangement using day-reporting inmates desirable in the interest of public safety, Sandberg said.

“None of my members are going to be losing any time or any overtime,” Sandberg said, adding that he agreed to this only because the inmates will be supervised by a deputy sheriff.

Ginnetti said snow and ice removal and pothole patching overtime so far this year has consumed $106,000 of the year’s $200,000 overtime budget for his office.

“It’s a great initiative, and it benefits the community, and I’m committed to giving the engineer’s office as many day-reporting inmates as they can use,” said Sheriff Jerry Greene. “Hopefully, they’ll be able to get a lot done.”

To illustrate the magnitude of the pothole problem, Ginnetti said his department used 80 tons of hot cold patch this past Monday through Wednesday alone, just on the stretch of Western Reserve Road between Hitchcock and Tippecanoe roads.

The county commissioners bought $99,600 worth of this product in February at $125 per ton.

The engineer’s trucks are going daily to Central Allied Enterprises Inc. in Canton to pick up the hot cold patch, which is a heated cold mix of asphalt, which doesn’t clump, flows out of the truck more smoothly and stays in the hole longer than traditional cold mix.

Cold mix and hot cold mix are used to make temporary repairs.

The commissioners soon will award a contract for hot-mix asphalt to make permanent repairs. The hot-mix plants likely will begin making that product next month, Ginnetti said.