Former Warren mayor sues city over damages resulting from water shutoff

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Hank Angelo, Warren’s mayor from 1996 to 2003, has sued the city, seeking damages after the city shut off his water in December 2017, causing his boiler and radiant-heating system and pipes to freeze. Angelo said he had to spend about $100,000 to repair the damage.

Angelo said he was current on his water bill and still doesn’t know why the city turned off his water about a month after he and his wife left on a seven-week trip away from home.

He filed the suit last week in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, seeking damages in excess of $25,000 for the $30,601 in damage to his home on Oak Knoll Avenue Northeast, the expense of living in a hotel room for seven months while it was repaired, and for the inconvenience, frustration, embarrassment and other discomfort it caused Angelo and his wife.

Angelo said he learned of a first notice from the water department while he was traveling shortly after leaving home. He spoke with a city official who told him the issue would be taken care of and not to worry about it.

A second notice was left at his home saying the water department needed to check his water meter and that his water service “may” be shut off, Angelo said. He didn’t know about that notice until he got home in January.

Angelo said he has tried many times to ask Franco Lucarelli, city utilities director, why his water was shut off, but Lucarelli has not called him back.

He did not know until he returned home Jan. 9, 2018, that the water had been off and that it had caused damage, Angelo said.

The suit accuses the city’s water department of “negligent management” for turning off his water service “without legally adequate cause or excuse.”

Attempts to reach Lucarelli and Greg Hicks, Warren law director, for comment Friday were unsuccessful.

Angelo said it’s been “a trying year and a half, and to have no answer to how it happened makes no sense to me.”

He said he doesn’t expect to be treated any differently than any other city resident, but wonders, “For people who never served with the city, are they treated this way?”