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Dog shelter contract award expected soon
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County commissioners likely will award contracts for construction of the county’s new dog shelter at 1230 N. Meridian Road by the end of this month, according to Carol Rimedio-Righetti, chairwoman of the commissioners.
She made that statement after hearing a presentation from Helen Copich Durflinger, the project architect, during a Thursday staff meeting.
“It’s going to be beautiful when it’s done. It’s needed, and now we’re moving forward,” Rimedio-Righetti said after the staff meeting.
If the commissioners follow Durflinger’s recommendations in awarding the contracts, including putting a durable metal roof on the building, Durflinger said the total construction cost would be $3,166,410, which is $482,555 below her pre-bid estimate of $3,648,965.
“A steel roof’s for life,” Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said during the meeting. “Why would you not put a metal roof on the building of that size? ... I would put a metal roof on it for longevity,” he added.
Ground could be broken by the end of May, and the building, which will take about a year to build, could be completed in the spring of 2017, Durflinger said.
The former Jump Stretch fitness center and a house on the site already have been demolished.
Durflinger recommended that the general contract be awarded to Vendrick Construction of Brookfield at $2,366,700; plumbing to the Conti Corp. of Lowellville at $238,800; heating, ventilating and air conditioning to D&G Mechanical of West Middlesex, Pa., at $205,910; and electrical to University Electric Inc. of Youngstown at $355,000.
All of those companies hire only union labor, she said.
Durflinger said her firm, Copich Architects of Liberty, has checked their references and visited some of their projects to check the quality of their work.
With a metal roof, the new 14,000-square-foot dog shelter will cost $226 per square foot, compared with a different architect’s estimate of $200 per square foot to renovate the existing 9,000-square-foot Industrial Road dog pound and add 3,500 square feet to it with a shingle roof, Durflinger observed.
In other business Thursday, the commissioners awarded a 37-month, $350,000-a-year contract beginning May 15 to Republic Services for the hauling and processing, using 8-cubic-yard front-load containers, of materials from the county’s 28 public drop-off recycling sites.
The 155 front-load containers will replace the 86 24-cubic-yard roll-off containers Republic now uses.
The roll-off containers can only be hauled one at a time on a specially equipped truck, which does not compact the container’s contents.
However, a truck can dump, carry and compact the contents of multiple 8-cubic-yard front-load containers from multiple locations on the same trip.
The new contract will include hauling of all of the current recyclable materials accepted at drop-off sites, including glass bottles, tin and aluminum cans, plastic containers, newspaper, office paper and cardboard.
“The savings between direct costs and avoided costs are going to be close to $1 million over the three-year contract period,’’ Lou Vega, county recycling director, said of the new collection container and hauling system.
The commissioners also approved a 30-month, $789,637 contract beginning July 1 for transportation and landfill disposal of sludge from five county wastewater-treatment plants to Browning Ferris Industries of Ohio, doing business as Allied Waste Services.
Sludge is the solid material left over after wastewater is treated.
The commissioners also voted to support the county’s application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for $2.9 million to fund the county’s lead hazard remediation office for the next three years.
This application is to cover the entire county, instead of just the designated areas with old houses and large numbers of children with elevated blood lead levels that the county’s lead hazard control office is now funded for, said Phil Puryear, county lead hazard remediation director.