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State Rep. Mike Loychik explains engineer selection

WARREN — State Rep. Mike Loychik has clarified why county highway engineers were selected and not sanitary engineers to coordinate local applications for sanitary sewer and water projects from a $250 million pool of funding the state set aside for counties.

By putting county engineers in charge of the selection of projects that will be sent to the Ohio Department of Development for consideration under guidelines the state agency is creating, the creators of House Bill 168 wanted to avoid giving an “unfair advantage to certain providers,” according to a statement from Loychik.

In 30 percent of the counties in the state, the elected county engineers also serve as sanitary engineer, Loychik, R-Bazetta, states. Plus, all counties have an elected county engineer but not all have a sanitary engineer, he states.

Loychik stated county engineers are best to oversee the application process in a way that has the “least potential for conflicts of interest while coordinating these important project selections.”

Trumbull County Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa said he understands what Loychik is saying, “but, at the end of the day, I don’t believe the argument. I think you assign tasks and responsibilities to people and departments that have to conduct those tasks. And in this case it is the sanitary engineer’s department.”

Trumbull County Engineer Randy Smith also defended the bill’s language in a letter.

“Many counties do provide water and sewer services throughout the state, sometimes in competition with other services providers. In some situations, in certain counties, the sanitary engineer could be conflicted, as a competitor, or have an unfair advantage against these other providers, such as municipal corporations, regional districts, or privately owned and operated facilities when it pertains to the distribution of grant dollars,” the letter states.

Cantalamessa and his fellow commissioners spoke against the assignment of the county engineer to oversee the application process at the state level, and also criticized Smith for not inviting someone from the commissioners’ or the sanitary engineer’s office to the first two planning sessions he held.

Cantalamessa and Commissioner Frank Fuda voted to remove Smith from the position of sanitary engineer last year. The county then placed Gary Newbrough, former deputy sanitary engineer, in charge of the department as interim sanitary engineer.

Fuda said last week he believes Smith left Newbrough out of his planning meetings as retribution for the move that cost Smith an extra $24,000 per year.

Smith pushed back Tuesday against claims made by commissioners about the situation.

“The commissioners want to cast me in a negative light, but they should be leaders of the county and instead started off their meeting with a fight,” Smith said.

The commissioners spent about eight minutes arguing about the composition of meeting minutes from previous meetings at the beginning of their workshop Tuesday.

Commissioners Cantalamessa, Fuda and Niki Frenchko have been arguing about a variety of topics in nearly every meeting for months, but the three came together for part of an hour Tuesday to rally against the way Smith set up the planning meetings and further agreed the bill should have placed county sanitary engineers in charge of the project coordination.

“Despite the conflict on this board, we have no disagreement on projects that will be beneficial to the community,” Frenchko said. Fuda and Cantalamessa agreed.

Fuda said some townships were left out of Smith’s process.

“I don’t understand and a few of the townships don’t understand, a few of them weren’t invited to the meeting and they don’t know why they weren’t invited, and the way I see it, we should be working as a team of people for the purpose of taking care of the citizens of Trumbull County using this money the best way we possibly can,” Fuda said.

Frenchko said the townships can’t move forward without the county sanitary engineer because the entities fall under county jurisdiction.

“In order to assist a township, (Smith is) going to have to work with our sanitary engineer, and I don’t want our townships to be left out because Mr. Smith isn’t including them or their representative Gary Newbrough at the table,” Frenchko said.

Smith said once the communities come together with their potential projects, their officials will come back to commissioners to ask about funding and work on agreements for sanitary services.

Smith said after the meeting he has a list of projects Newbrough made and he does not believe they are “shovel-ready,” as Frenchko said.

“This program is all about shovel-ready projects and moving forward quickly, not just tying up funds for future projects,” Smith said.

Newbrough said he has numerous projects that would be good candidates for the program and benefit people throughout the county.

Frenchko said she hopes “ego” won’t prevent Smith from working with Newbrough in a way that would benefit all of the communities under his jurisdiction.

Smith said the commissioners are trying to say he has politicized the process, but the commissioners should “look in the mirror if they want to talk about egos.”

He states he took action quickly to get the ball moving and he made no effort to exclude commissioners from meetings — and they made no effort to participate.

“We will be represented at the next meeting, but it is disingenuous to say that we never bothered to call. He is the point person in this bill; that means he should be notifying and coordinating these meetings with all that can benefit in the county,” Cantalamessa said. “The true irony is that this bill named the highway engineer as the point person because of fairness and to avoid conflicts. Fairness and conflict avoidance only happens when everyone has a seat at the table.”

Smith said the commissioners are dysfunctional and bring “chaos” to “every situation,” but his process is on the right track to “achieve the greatest level of funding success for much needed projects.”

County engineers have until mid-August to put applications together for the Water and Sewer Quality Program the bill created.

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