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Embarassing 2006 Trumbull County sewer engineering project gets worse with $185,000 jury verdict
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
One of the more embarassing episodes involving a contract for a Trumbull County construction project got worse this week when the contractor convinced a jury that the company deserved compensation of $185,000.
ES&C International of Boardman and its former president, Sat Adlaka, sued the Trumbull County commissioners in 2014 in common pleas court, arguing that the county owed the company $296,000 because it breached a 2006 contract by rescinding part of it.
After a two-day trial this week, the jury awarded the company $185,000 and attorneys’ fees.
The commissioners approved the contract with ES&C on Oct. 3, 2006.
It would have paid the company $1.2 million to design and oversee the first and second phases of a sewer project for the Scott Street area of Newton Township, according to the lawsuit and Vindicator files.
Later, county officials became aware that the contract award had been in error in that it called for $548,000 overpayment of ES&C, a mistake Gary Newbrough, then the county’s sanitary engineer, said he had made because of a misinterpretation of a preliminary engineering report.
The mistake was corrected by rescinding the $1.2 million contract ES&C had with the county and awarding the company a $250,000 contract for only the first phase of the job.
The sanitary engineer’s office handled the engineering in-house for the second phase, according to Vindicator files.
The contract was controversial right from the start, with then-Commissioner Paul Heltzel saying that the $1.2 million contract fellow commissioners Dan Polivka and James Tsagaris signed in September 2006 might be invalid because of the “irregularity in the process” he observed in the selection of ES&C.
Heltzel said the irregularity had to do with a campaign contribution Polivka received from Adlaka; and the county sanitary engineer at the time, Gary Newbrough, not being able to rank the engineering companies before a decision was made to hire them.
Heltzel also said Polivka and Tsagaris signed the contract without him or the county’s attorneys being aware of it.
When the matter came to a county commissioners vote Oct. 3, 2006, it passed 2-1 with Heltzel voting no and Polivka and Tsagaris voting yes.
About six weeks later, Newbrough revealed the mistake, saying a typographical error by an engineering consulting form caused him to misinterpret how much the engineering would cost.
Later it was learned that three local boards that have professional engineers on them reviewed the contract without noticing the mistake.