YOUNGSTOWN — State Sen. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, has written a letter to the Mill Creek MetroParks asking that it “restore, maintain and preserve the historic McGuffey Family Pond and dock at the McGuffey Wildlife Preserve, which is in my district.”

The letter then also asks that the MetroParks transfer ownership of the preserve to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources as a state nature preserve or co-manage the facility with the ODNR, as a state nature preserve.

The Feb. 14 letter is addressed to Lee Frey, president of the board of Mill Creek MetroParks. The short letter ends with: “I fully believe in this and ask for your strong consideration in the matter.”

The letter contains much of the same language the Mahoning County commissioners approved last week in a resolution asking the the MetroParks to “come together with with the (ODNR) and William Holmes McGuffey Historical Society to develop a partnership to restore McGuffey Pond … and to develop a funding plan to address the continued needs of the” preserve.

A few days later, Jeff Johnson, chief of the ODNR Division of Natural Areas, told The Vindicator that ODNR would not be doing anything to try to acquire the property against the MetroParks’ wishes.

“They have to have the final say,” Johnson said of the MetroParks. “We don’t use eminent domain or anything.”

TOD FOUNDATION

Also writing a letter in support of the McGuffey preserve were David Tod II and Sallie Tod Dutton, trustees of The Tod Foundation of Youngstown, saying they were “writing on behalf of the Tod Family which has been part of the Valley for over 200 years in different capacities.”

The letter, addressed to Frey, asked that the preserve and pond be “restored, maintained and preserved,” saying the “pond’s virtual disappearance and dock removal have denied children, families and wildlife a functioning lake and dock for education, recreation and nature purposes.”

The letter also encouraged the MetroParks to allow the site to be declared a state nature preserve.

METROPARKS POSITION

Frey and Aaron Young, MetroParks executive director, have steadfastly rejected the efforts of Richard Scarsella, chairman of the historical society, and other society members to get the MetroParks to turn over the property to the state or to maintain the pond.

Young said the commissioners’ resolution was not changing the MetroParks’ position that MetroParks is properly maintaining the preserve. In fact, Young said he is not even convinced that the preserve has a pond or ever had a pond.

“There is no reference to a pond whatsoever outside of Mr. Scarsella’s claims,” Young said.

Young added that “When I joined the MetroParks in 2015, the only thing I have to go by as to how McGuffey (should be) operated is the agreement the board of park commissioners executed with the McGuffey Historical Society in the late 1990s. There is no reference to a pond in that agreement. When I go to the site, I am hard pressed to find anything that resembled a pond. All I have are claims from Mr. Scarsella that a pond existed.”

Young said the property Scarsella describes as a pond area is a “wetland” and cannot be disturbed for that reason.

Frey said recently the MetroParks is not going to give the preserve to ODNR because the MetroParks is maintaining the property just the way promised in the 1998 agreement with the historical society — to make it a nature preserve.

Frey said ODNR has already said it will not maintain the pond if it takes control of the preserve and will do essentially the same thing with the preserve the MetroParks has done.

erunyan@vindy.com