YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County commissioners set an 11 a.m. Sept. 18 public hearing for a proposal to restrict construction of large solar and wind power-generating facilities in unincorporated area of Green Township.

The hearing will be at the commissioners meeting room in the basement of the county courthouse.

Commissioner David Ditzler talked about Ohio legislation involved with the such proposals.

The law, approved in 2021, allows a county to create zoning that allows the commissioners to restrict solar projects that are above 50 megawatts and for wind facilities larger than 5 megawatts, according to the Ohio State University Extension Service.

“In this case, we are looking to mirror what the local zoning in the communities do,” Ditzler said.

“If Green (Township) wants it to be XYZ because of their community, we feel that they have a better finger on the pulse of their community — so that we will do the county’s restrictions to mirror how they would want the local restriction to be.”

He said Green Township “has come to us requesting this, and I’m sure once one of them is initiated, there will be multiple other townships that will follow suit or join on and we will have to go through a similar process to do the balance of the townships in Mahoning County.”

Messages left for all three Green Township trustees seeking comment on the proposal were not returned.

OTHER BUSINESS

The commissioners this week also approved the allocation of $74,858, of the county’s $42 million in American Rescue Plan funds to Poland Township to enable the township to buy cameras that inspect the inside of storm sewers.

Omar Ganoom of Boenning & Scatterfield Inc. of Columbus, the county’s bond underwriter, said the county’s sanitary revenue bond rating is a Moodys AA3, “which is very stable and is a very good rating.”

He said the county’s sales tax bond rating of AA Standard and Poors is “an excellent rating. The limited tax general obligation debt is AA-, which is Standard and Poors, as well.”

“Currently the county is in very good fiscal condition, and all the ratings are stable. The county’s financial condition is the best it’s every been on the debt side,” Ganoom said.

Commissioner Anthony Trafficanti said Mahoning County taxpayers should interpret Ganoom’s comments to mean “their county is being run efficiently and effectively.”

The commissioners also heard from Robin Lees, Mahoning County Emergency Management director, regarding the tornado warnings the National Weather Service issued last Saturday for Mahoning County.

Lees told the commissioners he was pleased that there was “no actual damage” from the storm, “and it gave us an opportunity to see that the system worked the way it did. We had a lot of good feedback as ago how effective it was.”

Commissioner Carol Rimedio Righetti told Lees that the county’s alert system “worked phenomenally. I was in church, and the alarms were all over the place in church, even with the phones off. … And I also heard the alarm from YSU as well, so everything was working in the city.”

The commissioners also introduced their new public information officer, Megan Magnetta, who is working for the county 20 hours per week. County Administrator Audrey Tillis said Magnetta will take over public information duties Tillis has been handling.

“It’s to get the word out there, to get the information out there to say what the county is doing …, ” Tillis said.

She said it will enable county offices to have a greater presence on social media. “Nowdays, it’s all about information. It’s about the media and that’s how things happen, and it gets information out there … so the community knows what is going on, what’s happening,” she said.