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Commissioners hear pitch to have a senior-citizens service levy on the March 15 primary-election ballot
By Sean Barron
YOUNGSTOWN
An official with the Area Agency on Aging 11 is continuing to make a pitch to have a senior-citizens service levy on the March 15 primary-election ballot.
Joseph Rossi, the agency’s chief executive officer, told Mahoning County commissioners during their meeting Monday that the 1-mill, five-year, real-estate tax measure would fund services for people age 60 and older in an effort to keep them in their homes.
Services would include meals, personal care, protection from exploitation and abuse, adult day care, medication management and home repair and maintenance, he noted.
The levy would bring in about $6 million annually for those and other services and would cost the owner of a $100,000 home roughly $46 a year, representatives with AAA and Compass Family and Community Services said when they presented the proposal to commissioners at a Nov. 5 staff meeting.
Rossi estimated that about 30 percent of Mahoning County residents are age 60 or over and that the figure is expected to increase to 33 percent by 2025.
Also at the session, commissioners approved a resolution allowing the Mahoning County Sanitary Engineer’s office to apply for $650,000 in capital-improvement funding to continue a sanitary sewer and water project in Milton Township.
The money would go toward the project, estimated at $7.5 million, to construct sanitary sewer and waterlines that would affect about 150 properties along the lake’s southwestern shore and near Southeast River Road, noted William M. Coleman of the Sanitary Engineer’s office.
The effort would fill a gap in the project that was started but not finished because of a lack of funding, Coleman explained, adding that the application’s submission deadline is Monday.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources may provide added funding, he said.
The next commissioners’ meeting is set for 10 a.m. Dec. 3 in the Mahoning County Courthouse basement.