Creative financing makes life much smoother in city

Irate Motorists trying to navigate just about any of Youngstown’s decrepit, pothole-cratered major thoroughfares can thank a grants writer for the smooth ride they’ll likely enjoy on them next year.

That’s because a $13 million road surfacing and improvement project has materialized largely through the intervention of outside grant funding and creative partnerships to compensate for Youngstown’s increasingly anemic municipal budget. The city ended 2015 with its lowest income-tax and business- profit-tax collections since 2009, and financial projections look even worse this year. In dollars and cents, city revenue in 2016 is approximately $7 million less than a decade ago.

Such tight budgeting leaves little breathing room for major capital improvements such as a massive overhaul of the city’s embarrassing and dangerous battered roadways.

As a result, the success this year of Youngstown officials’ acumen at grant writing and grant-winning points to the value of aggressively exploring any and all creative means to buttress the city’s shrinking pot of traditional municipal revenue.

COMPREHENSIVE IMPROVEMENT PLAN

The proof is in the detailed plans and financing worked out for the $13 million citywide project, of which only about $5 million will come from local tax revenue.

The biggest project, costing $4.9 million, will repair the shabby surface of Wick Avenue between Wood Street and McGuffey Road. Funding from Youngstown State University and Youngstown CityScape will pay for about $1 million of that work on the North Side.

On the West Side, some $2.7 million will be spent to restore the lumpy and bumpy Meridian Road from Mahoning Avenue to Interstate 680 to a much more civilized condition. About $2 million of that price tag will be paid through state infrastructure grants.

Over on the South Side, paving the cracked-up South Avenue from Midlothian Boulevard to Williamson Avenue this summer and fall will cost $1.3 million with all of the cost paid from state and federal grants.

Elsewhere in the Valley, too, the potential of grant funding to remedy potential public-health and safety hazards plays out as well. For example, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is expected today to announce a $400,000 federal grant with no local match to help alleviate problems in the village of Sebring’s water system that earlier this year rose to crisis levels.

To be sure, those and other grants often cannot be regarded as mere handouts to Youngstown and Valley taxpayers. Many grants from the public sector originate in state and federal treasuries. They merely represent a small but fair payback for the investments local residents gain from the millions and millions of tax dollars they funnel to Columbus and Washington each year. Nonetheless, too often, those dollars do not return without a strong competitive fight with other communities.

Yet grants, be they from public or private sources, cannot be viewed as a long-term panacea or unending revenue streams for what ails local governments’ tax bases and budgets. After all, sources of funding from state, federal and private programs can dry up in a heartbeat, leaving communities in even more dire financial straits.

Therefore, grants cannot replace the need for conscientious and conservative fiscal stewardship by township and municipal governments over the outlays they make to their departments’ needs and their employees’ wallets.

In Youngstown, that means continuing vigilantly to seek out ways to attract new industries and developments to to broaden the city’s tax base. It also means using creative strategies to reduce expenditures through consolidation of services and trimming of any inessential personnel.

But when hard times hit – as they have today with the downturn in oil, gas and related industries that has cost the city hundreds of good-paying jobs – exploiting any and all grant opportunities makes eminently good sense to help protect public health and safety from becoming sacrificial lambs to budget squeeze plays.

As a result, we commend those grants writers in Youngstown whose talents will continue to be needed long after those sadly damaged roadways get their long neglected makeover.

They therefore cannot replace the ongoing need for tight reins over municipal budgets and responsible outlay

Funding is available for a variety of uses, including community planning, affordable housing finance, technical assistance, research, and capital infrastructure investments. To help you navigate the complex maze of opportunities, Reconnecting America has compiled a list of all upcoming programs and deadlines. The following matrix provides more information on upcoming opportunities, including eligibility requirements, program descriptions, and deadlines. For more information on an individual program, click on the The federal government spends over $500 billion annually on grants-in-aid to state and local governments,

making grants-in-aid the third largest item in the budget after Social Security and national defense. In

recent decades, federal aid to state and local governments has soared and, thus, increased their reliance on

federal aid for the financing of certain government functions.

Using data from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the following two charts place the post-

1960s explosion in federal grants to state and local governments in perspective.

Grants-in-aid are a primary mechanism that the federal government uses to extend its influence into state

and local affairs. Under the grant-in-aid process, the federal government claims to extend aid to the states to

finance “areas of domestic public spending” or for “swift fiscal relief during the recent recession” or for

when “severe and unforeseen economic conditions” arise.

The implications of federal grants-in-aid to state and local governments are far reaching. It raises questions

over Congress’s ability to attach conditions to federal grants-in-aid for other purposes. For individual states

to continue to qualify for federal funds for projects, they have to abide by certain federal rules or regulatory

controls. This muddies the lines between federal, state, and local government activities.link or go to www.grants.gov to start an application.

More than $13 million worth of improvement work to some of the city’s busiest roads – including South and Wick avenues and Meridian Road – will start in a few months.

“These are the major thoroughfares, and it’s very important they be in good condition,” said Mayor John A. McNally.

Youngstown will pay about $5.5 million toward the projects, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works. The rest is coming from state and federal grants as well as partnerships with Youngstown State University and the city of Campbell, he said.

“The funding gives the city an opportunity to get much-needed projects done without having to pay for it all,” Shasho said. “We don’t usually do this amount of work in a year. The projects will beautify the city and improve the quality of our major roads. We want to spur development, and road improvements are a big part of that.”

The most expensive project is $4.9 million worth of work on Wick Avenue between Wood Street and McGuffey Road with the city paying $3.9 million, Shasho said. YSU is paying $800,000 toward the project and Youngstown CityScape is raising private funds for part of the work.

The plan is to move above-ground utility poles underground between Rayen Avenue and the Madison Avenue Expressway access roads. The work also includes replacing two water lines with one, replacing a sewer line, new traffic lights, reducing the four-lane road to three with the middle being a turning lane and repaving the road, Shasho said.

The work should start around May and not be done until 2017, he said.

Also being done this year is a $2.7 million project on Meridian Road from Mahoning Avenue to Interstate 680 with the city paying $800,000 and the rest coming from state grants.

The work, expected to start in July and finish in 2017, is the first of three phases to improve Meridian Road. The project will be from Canfield Road to the Mahoning County line, Shasho said.

The county will handle the other two phases of the project – Canfield Road to Mahoning Avenue in 2017, and Interstate 680 to the county line a year later. The road goes along the Youngstown-Austintown border.

“We’ve been trying to get this done for a few decades,” Shasho said. “The road is in very poor condition. The outside lanes are deteriorating.”

The work includes repaving, replacing water lines and storm-sewer lines and curbing.

Improvements to Lincoln Avenue from Fifth to Wick avenues will cost $1.6 million with all but $300,000 coming from a federal grant. That work includes paving, adding parking spaces, installing new streetlights and making sewer improvements.

The city may close Lincoln between Wick Avenue and Hazel Street when the work begins in June, and keeping Hazel to Fifth open, Shasho said. The project should be finished by the fall, he said.

“Lincoln Avenue and Wick Avenue projects have been on the drawing board for a while, and we’ll be taking care of both of them this year,” McNally said.

Other projects include:

Paving South Avenue from Midlothian Boulevard to Williamson Avenue. The project’s cost is $1.3 million with all of the cost paid from state and federal grants. The project will start in July and take up to 90 days to finish.

Paving McCartney Road from state Route 616 to Keystone Avenue in Youngstown and Campbell. The work will cost $1.3 million with $163,000 from Youngstown, $97,000 from Campbell and the rest from a state grant. The project should start in May and take up to 90 days to finish.

Paving portions of four streets: Poland Avenue from Gibson to Jones streets, McGuffey Road from Lansdowne Boulevard to Liberty Street; Gypsy Lane from Belmont to Fifth avenues, and Wellington Avenue from North Belle Vista to North Lakeview avenues. About $900,000 of the $1.3 million project is covered by a state grant with the city paying the rest. The project will start in the spring and be finished in the fall, Shasho said.

The city is also budgeting up to $1.2 million to pave neighborhood streets this summer.

The money for that work will come from the city’s license-plate fees, federal Community Development Block Grant funds and the city’s water and wastewater funds if the paving work includes improvements to water and sewer lines, Shasho said.