YOUNGSTOWN — A city council ordinance to authorize the board of control to sign a $43 million contract to keep wastewater from flowing into two Mill Creek lakes will have to wait until Aug. 26 after the legislative body couldn’t pass it Monday.

That’s because only five of council’s seven members attended Monday’s meeting. Instead, the ordinance, along with the other items on the agenda, received first readings. Council needs at least six of its seven members to vote to approve legislation by emergency measure.

Absent on Monday were Councilwomen Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward, and Amber White, I-7th Ward.

Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, said: “We were all supposed to be here,” and “this was a meeting we all agreed to be at.”a

Council President Tom Hetrick said all council members previously agreed to Monday’s special meeting. Council takes a recess after its final June meeting until the third week in September – and schedules one meeting each in July and August.

Toward the end of Monday’s meeting, council agreed to next meet Aug. 26.

The key piece of legislation that received a first reading Monday was agreeing to have the board of control sign a contract for up to $43 million for Marucci & Gaffney Excavating Inc. of Youngstown to do the first two of four phases to an interceptor sewer project to keep wastewater from 13 lines from flowing into Mill Creek’s Lake Glacier and Lake Cohasset.

The $43 million is an estimate, and a final number was supposed to be determined in August.

After the meeting, Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works, said the final cost will have to wait a little longer to be settled because council couldn’t pass the legislation by emergency.

But it won’t delay the work, which is set to start in January, he said

“It shouldn’t delay the project,” he said. “We’ll get there.”

The interceptor sewer is part of a larger wastewater improvement project the city is required to do under a federal consent decree.

The sides “successfully finalized a proposed resolution,” according to a June 20 federal court filing by all the parties, to the ongoing dispute that permits the city to reduce a phase of the wastewater improvement project.

The federal government wants to make the resolution official by Aug. 26 to “provide sufficient time for the United States to consider any public comment on the proposed consent decree amendment and advise the court and other parties as to the United States’ final position.”

During Monday’s council finance committee meeting, before council met, Shasho said the city is seeking a $5 million Senate appropriation for the interceptor sewer project, and the city would borrow from the state whatever it doesn’t get in a possible Senate appropriation and potentially other funding sources.

Finance Director Kyle Miasek said he expects the city will have to again raise wastewater rates in order to pay the cost of the interceptor.

While Shasho said the city has to do the interceptor work because of the federal consent decree, “it’s the environmentally responsible thing to do,” and “it needs to get done. We want to get it done. It’s pretty humbling to think the problems of sewage into these watercourses over the last couple of centuries is going to be solved by us. It’s a worthwhile project. It’s not just for our generation, it’s for a few generations, our kids, their kids” and for the future.

Mayor Jamael Tito Brown said: “This is a bold move by this council and by this mayor to stop kicking the can. This is our courageous moment where we can say of all those that came before us and continue to kick it down the road, ‘we’re now taking on this bold incentive and saying we’re going to stop it.'”

But Councilman Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, said his constituents on the East Side don’t want a rate increase to clean up lakes in Mill Creek Park and “They want you to kick the can a few more times.”

SOBE CASE

Also getting a first reading Monday by council was a request to permit the board of control to spend $30,000 for a second expert witness in its ongoing effort to stop SOBE Thermal Energy Systems LLC from converting rubber tire chips into synthetic gas at its facility near downtown.

The $30,000 would be to pay JD Gibbs, associate director of consulting at BSI Group in Columbus, an environmental services expert with 33 years of experience.

The board hired Ranajit (Ron) Sahu of Alhambra, California, in a 3-0 vote for $60,000 on March 13 to provide testimony in front of the Ohio Environmental Review Appeals Commission in the case filed against SOBE and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency director. At the time of the city’s appeal last year Anne Vogel was the EPA director. It is now John Logue.

Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease of Columbus, SOBE’s attorney in the case, asked July 15 to withdraw. In situations like that, law firms typically seek to leave cases because they’re not being paid by their clients.

The Vindicator reported Friday that SOBE lost a $468,000 federal lawsuit for failing to pay for equipment and is facing a separate lawsuit from a business alleging a $400,000 check bounced.

Wabash Power Equipment Co. of Wheeling, Illinois, filed a federal lawsuit in Illinois on Nov. 29, 2024, against SOBE saying the latter breached an equipment lease agreement at SOBE’s Youngstown facility, 205 North Ave.

SOBE signed the two-year lease in November 2019 to use a mobile steam plant at $19,500 a month.

A federal judge in Illinois ruled Jan. 29 in favor of Wabash’s motion for default judgment and issued a final judgment in its favor for $468,000.

Wabash filed a May 23 motion in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to repossess and remove the equipment after SOBE refused many demands for the property, according to court documents.

Judge Anthony Donofrio of common pleas court on June 10 ordered the sheriff’s department to seize the property and deliver it to Wabash.

Meanwhile, Alcon Mechanical Piping Inc. of Niles on July 19 filed a complaint in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court against SOBE for nonpayment for the January 2024 installation of piping at two downtown businesses that receive steam heat from SOBE on behalf of that company.

The lawsuit contends on Sept. 20, 2024, that SOBE CEO David Ferro “delivered a check to plaintiff in the amount of $400,000 and was deliberately obtuse and evasive as to whether or not the check could be cashed.”

When the check was cashed Feb. 18, the lawsuit claims it was returned for insufficient funds.

Alcon sent a letter to SOBE on April 17 saying it would sue for “passing of bad checks,” and SOBE “has not responded to this demand in any meaningful respect,” according to the lawsuit.

Alcon is suing for $428,458, including compensatory damages.