STEUBENVILLE — Prime Time Office on Aging Director Trudy Wilson wants Jefferson County voters to know the funds generated by the replacement levy they passed in November are being used exactly how they meant them to be.

“We’ve provided more than 318,000 meals to senior citizens in Jefferson County (during the 2024-25 fiscal year),” Wilson said in her annual report to the county commissioners on Thursday. “We have grown, year-over-year, by more than 67,500 meals. That’s just an extraordinary (number) of meals that we’re providing to people, and that’s Monday through Friday.”

Wilson said they currently do 10 home-delivery routes, though they’re looking to add one or two more. They also have congregate sites as well as several drive-through sites where people can pick up their meal and take it with them.

“We opened a congregate site in Hammondsville — it has been just fabulous to be that far north into the county,” she said. “They started out with about 30 meals and then went to 50 and then a hundred — they run up as high as 150 meals a day. They also offer activities including bingo, and even an exercise class for their people there. So it’s getting all that community activity and all those people together for just congregate fellowship, which is good for what we’re trying to do with seniors in Jefferson County. We also opened another site down a little bit further south in the county, at Rivers Landing Apartments in Brilliant. We were asked to start that (and) now we deliver about 30 meals a day down there to the residents who live there.”

She said a member of City Council, who she didn’t identify, asked her what they’d have to do to get a congregate site in the South End of Steubenville because “a lot of those people are older” and don’t have transportation.

“And I said, just find a location that has a refrigerator, a sink, a microwave and a place where people can sit and eat. And so, he worked with Catholic Charities Center of Hope downtown — we met with them, with the bishop almost immediately approving the plan,” she said. “So, I think during the next couple of months, we’ll able to open a new site downtown that is walking accessible for those people who live down there, I think that’ll be a big, big hit to offer food there. So, you know, we’re just growing by leaps and bounds. We have to be careful now that we don’t overextend ourselves based on the number of employees we have, the number of vehicles we have, the number of staff that we have, we are getting so many (requests) that occasionally we have to (put them on a waiting list.)”

Commissioners adopted a resolution asking the Ohio Director of Development to designate the old Sammis plant and Hollow Rock properties as priority investment areas, taking advantage of new legislation taking effect in a couple of weeks. The properties, acquired by Houston-based Energy Transition and Environmental Management in 2023, are currently in the demolition stage. That designation, if granted, brings with it accelerated permit reviews, brownfield funding for site preparation and development costs plus a utility tax exemption.

Brownfield sites and former coal mines are eligible for the designation.

ETEM co-founder and general counsel Dan McDevitt told commissioners in June a data center could potentially be a good fit since it has an on-site switching station and substation, so power can be imported or exported; water and rail; and a large loading and unloading area.

“They’re tearing the plant down and they’re going to develop the property,” Commissioner Tony Morelli said. “They make the property developable for new industry which could possibly be anything from gas power to hydroelectric power generation facilities. They asked us to form a resolution for them to make it a priority investment area.”

They also were told changes could be on the horizon at the drag strip by the fairgrounds. The property is owned by the county and leased to the drag strip operator.

Commissioner Jake Kleineke said the operator initially mentioned “wanting to do some improvements on the track, and possibly do some TV shows and things like that, sort of like what you see on TV,” and he’d told him he’d have to clear it with the park board and all of the commissioners first.

He said he’s since been told “another entity wants to purchase the lease from the operator who has it” and then make significant improvements, “but first (we’d need) to make sure that they can legally do that.” Kleineke suggested giving a copy of the lease to their attorney to find out what rules would apply.

Kleineke said the lease is “due to be signed again in October, I believe.”

Commissioners also committed to doing a Christmas light show, a staple of Steubenville’s Nutcracker Village holiday celebration, again this year after Maintenance Supervisor Patrick Boyles told them the contractor, Occasion Nation, needed to know their plans because “a lot of people are asking them for the dates we want to use them, and they need a commitment.”

The county’s holiday light display, set to music, kicks off Thanksgiving weekend and continues through Christmas.

“Everybody wants those dates, those weekend dates,” Boyles said, adding the company held the line on its $8,000 fee.

Commissioners also told Boyles to proceed with plans to designate five parking spaces in the courthouse lot for public use only with another to be set aside for title office customers so staff can do VIN checks without having to walk to distant parking spots. The decision means county employees will have to use the county-owned parking lot up the street, across from the Tower building.

A space will also be reserved for use by vehicle owners trying to register their VIN number with the county.

In other action, commissioners:

• Agreed to advertise for bids for the 2025 county Road 6 slip repair project, which will consist of construction of two drilled shaft retaining walls with precast concrete lagging. The engineer’s estimate is $122,755.

• Were told two architectural firms are interested in providing their services for the Social Security build-out in the Tower building — McKinley Architecture and Engineering of Wheeling and the Thrasher Group of Bridgeport, W.Va. Their submissions will be reviewed by Boyles and the commissioners.

• Revised the original contract for the county Road 43 and townships Ohio Public Works Commission resurfacing project to $694,018. Eroshevich said the increase reflects a post-winter re-evaluation that another quarter-inch of resurfacing thickness was needed, which will cost $19,024, plus another 86 cubic yards of asphalt on Saline Township Road 304 to extend the project by 792 feet to the intersection with county Road 68, a nearly $18,383 upgrade.

• Approved appointments to the Local Emergency Planning Committee: Steubenville Fire Chief Joe Ribar; Ohio State Highway Patrol Lt. Robert Bodo; county Commissioner Eric Timmons; John Parker and Rob Herrington (emergency management); Nate Montoya (hospital); Todd Wines and Clark Crago (first aid); Andrew Henry and Kylie Smogonovich (Jefferson County Health Department); Bob Muze (environmental); Tim Turner (transportation); Ross Gallabrese (media); Paul Brandt and LPEC Chairman Bob Herceg (community); Debra Venci and Larry Couch (industry); and Brenda Burkey (EMA and LEPC administrative assistant.) The application will now be submitted to the State Emergency Response Commission.