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Move on Niles repairs then prevention

Why must the wheels of government grind so slowly, even when a situation exists that clearly is an emergency?

Taxpayers in Niles should be no less than livid that the people hired to protect them and their property — the people who are willing drop everything on a second’s notice and rush into burning buildings to save lives — have been asked to live and sleep in deplorable conditions brought on by years of failing at basic building maintenance and upkeep.

Roof leaks in the Niles Fire Department’s living quarters have required sheets of plastic to be hung overhead to catch water and rust. After a recent heavy rain, the crew ran out of buckets to catch the water flowing from the ceiling!

It’s true that repairs to the severely damaged Niles Fire Station roof are underway, but in the interim, firefighters have been forced to dash across State Street to awaiting fire trucks from their temporary quarters set up in the Niles Senior Center.

Actually, the roof of the Safety Service building has been under construction since December — the month a portion of the ceiling collapsed in Niles Municipal Court, which shares the building’s upper floor with the fire department.

That was three months after the $341,000 roofing contract was awarded in September to Twinsburg-based Campopiano Roofing to replace the roof on the city’s Safety Service Building.

While some members of Niles City Council have expressed frustration over the amount of time it’s taken the contractor to get the roof done, what they should be discussing is how the situation ever got to the point of requiring the need for such immediacy — especially when this problem has existed for years.

In a Tribune Chronicle story that published Sept. 14, 2016, Councilman Ryan McNaughton said this: “I am so mad the previous regime allowed us to get to this point. … It infuriates me. Here is another Dumpster fire that we have to try and put out. … This place (the Safety Service Complex) needs a new roof.”

An April 7, 2017, story described Niles firefighters using sheets of plastic to divert leaking water into buckets to avoid it running onto their beds. In that story, a firefighter said the bandage solutions had been the norm since he had joined the fire department in 2014.

Yes, that’s right — 2014.

That is simply unacceptable.

While the sitting elected officials like to point fingers at previous city leaders — and in many cases they are well justified — they must remember much of these delays have been going on for years under their watch as well.

Not only do they need to keep the pressure on to get these projects done now, but they also must ensure there is a well thought-out inspection and routine maintenance schedule that must be adhered to in the future. Only that will ensure this situation never, ever happens again.

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