Trumbull County has one less engineering building. The Cortland garage, that stores snow equipment year-round, had to close because of issues with the roof. 

Back in April, a bad storm blew part of the building roof off. Now, a orange sign hangs on the front door that reads “do not enter until further notice”

“Since then we have not been allowed in the building. It doesn't appear that there are any immediate plans to repair the building,” Tom Klejka, Highway Superintendent for Trumbull County Engineer's Office said.  

Inside the garage there's panels falling down and holes in the roof. Since the building can’t be used, all of the trucks that normally come out of the Cortland garage have been moved to the Warren garage. Klejka said that's going to cause major delays in snow removal this year. 

“We will have a delay in services every snowfall of up to an hour could be an hour and a half,” he said. “When all of the seven trucks that report out of here (Cortland) have to report down here (in Warren ) to load, it delays everyone.”

In the winter, it is important to keep the trucks in a heated garage so that the cold doesn’t cause mechanical issues. 

“When the hydraulic fluid in the trucks is extremely cold, 0 degree temperatures it's very hard on the pumps and the hoses and it creates failures in the hoses,” Klejka said. 

During a Public Workshop on Tuesday, getting an estimate on how much a new roof would cost was discussed.

“We just approved today to go out for a request on a quote, for the engineer to go out and get estimates on the roof and it's something that we're going to fix up,” Commissioner Denny Malloy said. 

Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa also said they hired an engineer to get quotes.

It's still up in the air as to where the money will come from to pay for the roof but both Cantalamessa and Malloy said it could come from a loan.

Commissioner Niki Frenchko did not attend the public works meeting but was asked if she supports fixing the roof and using a loan to do it and said in a statement: “The current & past board voted against assessing buildings (including roofs) to plan for preventative maintenance, against establishing a restricted fund that was recommended by a budget committee for emergencies (like roofs), and against looking at all potential ARPA expenditures together - which included building and structural repairs. This would have been prevented with forethought, supervision, policy & a yes vote to those suggestions.”

However, with no timeline on when a new roof will be put on, Trumbull County drivers could have a slippery winter season. 

“I don't know if there's an urgency to fix it before winter,” Malloy said. “We have a lot of facilities in Trumbull County and we have a big staff in Trumbull County. We have a lot of supply yards throughout the county … there's a few employees that work there that have been reassigned to other areas and we’ll continue to service everyone in Trumbull County without a hitch.”