YOUNGSTOWN — City council is to vote today on spending $3 million in American Rescue Plan funds to hire an architect for a potential safety campus, but the proposal may not have enough support for passage.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown, the legislation’s sponsor, said, “I don’t know what will happen. I’d love to go out for proposals for architects. I’d like to keep moving. If it’s not $3 million then at least let’s find out how much.”

Council members Pat Kelly, D-5th Ward, and Anita Davis, D-6th Ward, oppose the police station-main fire house project proposed for the city’s North Side and to spend $3 million for design work. The location on Wick Avenue is an area once known as the Wick Six, a group of new car dealerships that left in the 1980s.

The city purchased much of the 12 acres in 2015 and has spent at least $750,000, mostly from grants, to clean it up for development.

Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward, said Monday he supports a new safety campus, but not at that North Side location and was unsure how he would vote today.

“My compass is: It has to be functional and economical,” Ray said.

Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, said of the $3 million request, “I demand transparency, and we haven’t had that. I understand the city owns it, but it’s a very large amount of money and we haven’t seen a plan.”

Councilman Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, said Monday, “A safety campus is needed. Do I have concerns on the dollar amount? I’m still talking about it. You’ve got to have modern-day policing, and what we have now is not modern- day policing.”

Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, has been the most vocal member of city council in favor of the project and the location, saying it would be a catalyst for development in that part of Youngstown.

“I think it will go, but at a lower amount,” he said.

Councilwoman Amber White, I-7th Ward, couldn’t be reached Monday to comment on the proposal.

Another issue, Brown said, is that the firefighters union opposes a joint police-fire campus.

“We should have the architect do a couple of different scenarios,” Brown said. “What’s a joint campus look like, or two individual ones look like and a new police station and a (main fire station) rehab. If not joint, the police station is needed.”

Brown said the Wick Avenue location is the most realistic place for the facility, which could cost between $30 million and $45 million.

Brown asked city council in December to commit up to $15 million in ARP funds for a 138,000-square-foot facility. The request was met with resistance from most of council. There’s been discussions of lowering the ARP requests for the facility, including the architectural costs.

Brown said the design work would result in an actual cost for the project as well as potential other locations.

The city administration wants to use ARP money as well as state and federal grants to pay for the project with the remaining money being borrowed over a 20-year period.

The project would take about eight to 10 months to design and then 18 to 24 months to construct.

Regarding the money, Turner said, “I still would like to see how we get to the capital stack.”

Brown said the plan is to build a new police station and demolish the one currently attached to city hall.

COUNCIL CHAMBER PROPOSAL

Meanwhile, Turner wants council to spend up to $2 million in ARP funds to make improvements to its chambers on the sixth floor of city hall.

That proposal would include upgrades to the heating and air conditioning system as well as electrical improvements and a new audio-visual system to allow people to watch council meetings without attending in person.

Council meetings have been taken place outside of city hall for more than a year because of problems with the building’s fire escape. The fire escape has been removed from the building and the replacement cost is about $1.4 million with the plan to have the work done by mid-May.

“We need to upgrade our chambers,” Turner said. “We put it on the back burner because we don’t have the resources. We have them now.”

But several of her fellow council members don’t back spending $2 million in ARP funds to upgrade council chambers.

Davis said $2 million “is out of line,” while $500,000 is “reasonable.”

She added, “We need to update. These are not vanity projects. We’re trying to reach as many people as possible” with the ability to show council meetings online.

Hughes also said $2 million is too much, but “some things are long overdue. Council needs these improvements. We can’t do it without these (ARP) funds. I’m in favor of spending some money on improvements.”

Ray said he won’t support a $2 million ARP allocation for council chambers “without documentation. We shouldn’t give ourselves a blank check. We need to hold ourselves up to a higher standard. Technology upgrades? Yes. But let’s use common sense because $2 million seems way out of line in my book. Maybe $500,000. The technology is needed. Beyond that, I don’t know what we’d do with another $1.5 million.”

Oliver said the idea to upgrade council chambers to improve technology was initially discussed years ago.

“To the tune of $2 million is pushing it,” he said. “We need the same upgrades as the administration. Upgrading the technology is absolutely important. It’s a good idea, but I’m not sure of $2 million. (Turner) proposing this without a complete plan is the same thing we’re asking the administration to do with the safety complex. Everyone wants to see Samantha hold herself to the same standards she holds everyone else.”

Brown said he’s concerned with the time left to spend the city’s ARP funds. The city received $87.8 million – half in May 2021 and the rest in May 2022 – and has to appropriate it all by the end of this year and spend it all by the end of 2026, Brown said.

“My concern is time,” he said. “There’s a lot of details to that. Do we have enough time to do that by the deadline? The problem is those are contracts. You’ve got to get someone on board to do that.”

City council has allocated all but about $8 million of its ARP funds to date, but the city has spent about $16 million so far.

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