WARREN — Months after appearing at a Trumbull County Council of Governments meeting and telling them he wasn’t able to do infrastructural improvements, county engineer David DeChristofaro said that stance hasn’t changed — especially with demolitions.

DeChristofaro said Friday that demolitions are one of the things his office cannot do, something he verified through the county prosecutor’s office.

“The work that we do has to be limited to the public right-of-way, which includes ditching work, mowing and paving, and patching potholes and replacing culverts and frost pipes – things of that nature,” DeChristofaro said. “I know the previous engineer might have done that, but I don’t think they’ve ever cleared it through our prosecutor’s office.”

“I checked with our prosecutor’s office to see if that was something this office could do, and I was told ‘No, you can’t. You can’t do work outside the right-of-way,” he added.

DeChristofaro said nothing was prohibiting the COG from doing demolitions on its own; they were just prohibited from using his office to do so.

“They’re certainly able to find other companies to do demolitions that are legitimate companies that are allowed on private property,” DeChristofaro said. “My attorneys, through the prosecutor’s office, said they never gave their ‘OK’ to do that work.”

DeChristofaro said in April that he was presented with by the state auditor’s office, a negative letter in 2022 and a positive one, signed by Chief Deputy Auditor Robert Hinkle, giving them the green light to do projects through the COG a year later.

“The opinions that were from the auditor’s office are state auditor’s opinions; they’re not legal opinions from the prosecutor’s office,” he said.

DeChristofaro said that for the prosecutor’s office to get involved to begin with, someone would have to file a complaint.

He said he believed the demolitions through the past county engineer’s office were “improper,” which led to his questioning.

“I thought it would be important for me to know what was the proper thing to do,” DeChristofaro said. “And it was improper for me to be using road taxes, gasoline taxes, license plate taxes that are intended to be used for road issues on taking down buildings.”

DeChristofaro said that although the past administration would submit bills to reimburse for payroll, there were things the office was never reimbursed for — namely supplies, materials and equipment.

“I think that’s a moot point because it should have never been done in the first place; and that’s not just my opinion, that’s the legal opinion that I received,” he added.

DeChristofaro recalled COG members such as Howland trustee James LaPolla offering a legal opinion from their lawyer, to which he said he would only accept advice from his own legal counsel.

DeChristofaro said there are 88 counties in the state, and he called about 60 of them, asking if they did demolitions for blight. He said all 60 said no, and that he didn’t think it would be necessary for him to call the remaining 28 when the majority had the same answer.

“I don’t think this is something that a county engineer does anywhere in the state,” DeChristofaro said. “I’m not sure if it’s the best use of our license plate taxes and our gasoline taxes when our money is stretched to do the work that we have.”

He said he wasn’t arguing that blighted buildings shouldn’t be taken down, but he questioned why the county was doing the work of private companies that specialized in the field.

“When I got elected, I asked them (my employees) about the building demolitions, they said, ‘we have no experience in building demolitions,'” DeChristofaro said. “There’s the possibility of injury because of a lack of experience.”

DeChristofaro said if it were something he was legally capable of doing, he would “seriously consider” doing the demolitions, and at that point in time, he would look for qualified people.

COG ATTORNEY

Warren attorney Jeff Goodman, who was selected as the COG’s attorney and helped the organization draft its founding documents and bylaws, said Thursday he didn’t know the exact number of demolition projects that have been accomplished through the engineer’s office via the COG.

He said it has been a “tremendous asset” to the county and its governing bodies — as well as its taxpayers.

“Those projects and the cooperative efforts of the COG have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars for taxpayers in Trumbull County; it’s a program that is not political, not partisan-political — never has been,” Goodman said. “You have a lot of trustees and city officials and county officials from both parties working together for a common goal.”

Goodman said there was a provision in the Ohio Revised Code that enabled the creation of a council of governments, which was defined as an organization that allows for resource-sharing between communities in the council.

He said other state statutes prohibit a township from utilizing its resources for the benefit of another municipality or township, but COGs are an exception, making them “not uncommon” for areas to form.

Goodman said in Trumbull County, one of their historically shared resources was blight remediation — involving the demolition of buildings.

“The county has equipment and expertise that smaller townships and cities don’t have — those kinds of resources,” Goodman said. “With respect to demolitions in particular, the county is able to undertake a lot of that work at a much lower cost, and on many of these projects we’re talking about the savings of hundreds and thousands of dollars to conduct these demolitions.”

Goodman said the costs involved were all paid by the city or township benefiting from the demolition.

“These items are all addressed by the state auditor, when you’re talking about man hours, or equipment usage or fuel costs or the disposal of debris from a demolition,” Goodman said. “Those costs are all passed through the COG.”

If a township were to want to knock down a building, and its estimated cost was $500,000 through outside contractors, they could accomplish it through the COG for about $80,000, he added.

Goodman said he was very familiar with the differing opinions in letters passed down to DeChristofaro through the state auditor’s office.

He explained the first letter in 2022 was based around the idea that they wanted more information and didn’t have the full picture. However, after getting additional information, Goodman said the auditor’s office deemed it appropriate and green-lit the projects moving forward.

PREVIOUS ENGINEER

Former county engineer Randy Smith has clashed with DeChristofaro for the last 18 years for the position, holding it for 13 years until getting edged out by him in the 2024 election.

Smith said his involvement with demolitions as an engineer began in 2015, with the demolition of a Scott Street house in Warren, where a tragic incident had occurred.

“The City of Warren and the sheriff at the time asked that we engage in demolishing that house in conjunction with the City of Warren, and so everything came together in relatively short order,” Smith said. “And the prosecutor’s office had some reservations, but they said, ‘We’ll allow you to proceed because here we are, everything’s moving forward, we’re in the 11th hour.”

Smith said the county prosecutor’s office suggested they get an attorney general’s opinion for clarity. He said the attorney general returned a multi-page opinion that included 16 to 17 different types of questions, but at one point, said a COG can have “broad authority” in doing work.

Smith said he didn’t mind helping the county’s sheriff out, because a lot of the equipment the engineer’s office had obtained was through the military surplus program and had a value of “millions of dollars.”

“It was putting back the taxpayer money to use in doing that,” Smith said.

He said when the state auditor’s initial opinion came through, the auditor didn’t realize that the county engineer wasn’t “signatory” to the agreement for the most part, because the equipment belonged to the county commissioners at the end of the day.

Smith said the question of liability and insurance was brought about at least several times, but it was covered through the County Commissioners Association of Ohio that Trumbull County was insured to do demolition work.

MOVING FORWARD

In terms of the COG’s value without demolitions, Goodman said the organization was so many other things.

He named things such as mask testers for the fire department, as an example.

“A township fire department can’t afford to have this equipment; it’s just not in the budget,” Goodman said. “But when you have a COG, you can have several communities pull together their resources and purchase this equipment any individual township is only going to utilize once every six months anyway.”

He said with the communities in a cooperative effort, they can purchase those items for 25% of the cost they would otherwise need to spend.

“And that’s what good government’s all about,” Goodman said, “it’s doing the most you can with the least amount of taxpayer resources.”