YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County commissioners allocated more than $2 million of its $44 million in American Rescue Plan funds at their meeting Thursday, but none was easier to see and understand than the $50,000 they gave to Youngstown’s St. Augustine Society to help it continue to operate its Cafe Augustine job placement and life-skills program.

The nonprofit society will use the $50,000 to buy the building where participants in the program live. The current owners of the building decided to sell, and the St. Augustine Society hated to find another place.

The Rev. Edward Brienz explained the purpose of the cafe at 3730 Market St., inside the Newport library branch, on the South Side as a restaurant that helps “folks who grew up in homes that don’t necessarily have an employment history and don’t necessarily have strong success in their careers.”

Young people ages 16 and into their 20s work in the cafe, which is open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday and serves meals such as hamburgers, chicken-salad sandwiches, soup, stuffed cabbage, shrimp and haddock.

Brienz, who is executive director of the society, which he created in 2015, said the society discovered the young people they worked with did well in their work environment at the cafe, but they struggled with consistency in their home life.

So when a former girls home at 2125 Glenwood Ave. closed, the society started to rent it in order to provide their workers with a place to live with help from volunteers.

“We found that it was an important part because when our young people go home now, they have heat, they have air conditioning in the summer. They have running water, hot water, laundry machines, soap and a staff — mostly volunteer — that help them stay on track.”

The home has provided stability for their workers for about four years, but the owner decided to sell.

“That would have ripped the guts out of our program,” Brienz said. “We have had over 350 young people in our program in the last seven years,” he said. “We have buried at least 14 of them,” he said starkly of the hard life many of their workers live.

“We’ve had so many come through the house for varying lengths of time for whatever they needed, that we didn’t want to see it lost,” he said of the residence, called the Augustine House.

Brienz thanked the commissioners for the funding to acquire the property.

“We need that stability. The commissioners are giving us that stability, particularly during COVID times. Many of our grants have dried up.”

He said the cafe closed for a while because of COVID-19, so they moved some of the workers into health care.

“We moved them into nursing homes and other types of jobs to teach them flexibility, adaptability,” he said.

Among the other recipients of ARP funds were $1.75 million to continue the upgrades to the Campus of Care on Countyline Road in Austintown, the former Youngstown Developmental Center.

The commissioners awarded the money to the Western Reserve Port Authority, which manages the facility on behalf of the county commissioners.

The funds will pay for $700,000 worth of asphalt resurfacing, $120,000 of water, sewer electric and plumbing upgrades, $100,000 worth of sound system and lighting improvements, $575,000 worth of work on residential units and $250,000 for a commercial greenhouse.

The commissioners also appointed four people to serve on the Mahoning County Planning Commission.

Robert J. Lidle, Lou Zarlenga and Scott “Tim” Marucci will fill three-year terms. Attorney John McNally IV, former Youngstown mayor and former Mahoning County commissioner, was appointed to fill the unexpired term of Angelo Pignatelli effective immediately until Dec. 31, 2022.

erunyan@vindy.com