Canfield Township small businesses qualify for low-interest loans for cleanup

CANFIELD

Township Administrator Keith Rogers said township small businesses sustained enough damage in the May 28 storm and flooding to qualify for low-interest loans for cleanup.

But for people living in those hardest-hit areas, “it doesn’t help people that were living there, if they weren’t insured,” he said during a Tuesday trustees meeting. The Ohio Emergency Management Agency has not yet finished its evaluation of local storm damage assessments, which will justify monetary relief.

“That night, with the six inches of rain we had, that was the equivalent of a 500-year storm,” he said. “Pebble Beach Drive — that looked like the Rio Grande. It was blowing past the catch basins ... ”

The township in January received its first half of the property assessments recently put in place by ABC Water and Storm Water District — of which Rogers is also a board member — amounting to about $141,000 for the township itself. With another about 450 new homes, additions or detached structures built since 2014, he said he’s expecting the assessments could bring up to $350,000.

The district “is trying to work with an engineer to get a comprehensive plan and to pick our ‘best’ areas to get the most bang for our buck and fix areas in the township,” Rogers said. “Then, hopefully we can use our local share and put it towards grants to get the most money we can to start working on these areas.”

Rogers said he’d like to see a few more detention ponds built — one on a vacant lot near the intersection of Pebble Beach Court and Pebble Beach Drive and two others northwest of there which could help mitigate runoff from the Ohio Turnpike.