City council agreed to replace the city hall fire escape at a cost of $1.1 million — a project that will take six more months to finish. “The time that this is taking so far is alarming because it’s the safety of it,” Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, said. Fire Chief Barry Finley ordered the fire escape closed March 9 after a Feb. 3 inspection determined it was inoperable. City officials initially decided to repair the fire escape at a cost of about $250,000. But Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works, said July 5 that the fire escape was in worse condition than anticipated, and it would be more effective in the long term to replace it.
Council voted 7-0 Monday to raise the amount to $1.1 million and have the board of control pay the lowest and best bidder for the replacement. Shasho said he expects to get proposals by Friday, with two companies already interested in doing the work. The repairs initially were to be finished by this month. But with the replacement, it will take another six months, Shasho said. The city already owes about $250,000 for cleaning and sandblasting the existing fire escape and for design work, he said. Repairing it would cost about $300,000 more so Shasho said he, Finley and Kevin Flinn, commissioner of buildings and grounds, recommended to Mayor Jamael Tito Brown that a replacement — at almost three times that price — would be better even though it would be more costly. “City hall’s not going anywhere,” Shasho said. “We’re going to be here in perpetuity practically.” He added: “It was probably best to go ahead and suck it up and replace the fire escape with a modern, galvanized-steel fire escape.”
City officials announced March 9 that the fire escape would be shut down until work to it could be finished. Because it’s the only other way to get in and out of the building besides the stairwell in case of a fire, city council moved all of its meetings from the sixth floor, where it regularly holds them. The building’s two elevators automatically shut down when there’s a fire. The concern is too many people attend council meetings and it would be dangerous to have them in council chambers. All but two council meetings, including Monday’s, since then were moved to the Covelli Centre community room with finance committee meetings taking place before them. Council next meets Aug. 23, but a location hasn’t been determined. Other committee meetings and city bodies have met elsewhere in city hall, mostly in conference rooms on the second or fifth floors, or at the Eugenia Atkinson Recreation Center.The board of control has continued to meet on the sixth floor in the council caucus room.
ARP SPENDING
City council approved $321,000 in American Rescue Plan spending for a total of three projects, all sponsored by members of council. The money for the three requests would come from the $14 million in ARP funding — $2 million per ward — that council voted in April 2022 to give themselves. A number of council-sponsored ARP requests have met with resistance from Brown and Law Director Jeff Limbian who question if the proposals meet federal ARP requirements and the goals of what residents want from the city’s total $82,775,370 award. A little more than half of the $14 million council awarded itself has been approved by the legislative body. But less than half of that has been allocated by the board of control, consisting of Brown, Limbian and Finance Director Kyle Miasek. Instead of a Brown veto, the board of control has chosen not to put several of the council funding requests up for a vote. Turner on Monday asked Limbian and representatives for Brown and Miasek if they had sufficient information to approve the proposals and all said no.
Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, sponsored spending $150,000 for the Western Reserve Port Authority to buy 64 Ridge Ave., a 73-year-old former medical building, to turn it into a community center and business incubator. Turner opposed the project and read a lengthy statement from James F. Bird, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Youngstown, in opposition to the project, stating there are already a number of existing buildings that could be used for the project. Oliver said Bird’s statement was “irrelevant” and pointed out that Turner serves on the club’s board of directors. Turner ended up abstaining from the vote. After the vote, Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, asked Limbian if a council member who also serves on a board — such as Turner with the Boys & Girls Clubs — should engage in discussions like the one Monday about Oliver’s project. Limbian said not participating in those discussions “would be a wise course of conduct, but we can’t unring the bell.”
The two other council-backed ARP projects approved Monday are:
• Councilman Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, providing $150,000 to the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. to conduct a ward-wide cleanup project “to eliminate blight and improve neighborhood conditions.”
To read the full story from The Vindicator, click here.
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