STEUBENVILLE — City officials are hoping they found a work-around for costly renovations to a burned-out picnic shelter at Beatty Park.

Council last week was told that making the shelter look like new could cost upwards of $200,000 — well above the $106,000 they have in hand from insurance ($70,000), a grant from the Pugliese Foundation ($25,000) and another from PNC ($10,000). That would leave the city with a funding shortfall of $90,000 or more at a time when the budget is “very tight” and extra cash is in short supply.

After visiting the shelter multiple times DURING the past week and consulting city officials as well as a contractor, first Ward Councilman Dave Albaugh told council he thinks the work could be done much more affordably with some common-sense, cost-effective changes–using budget-friendly plywood vs the tongue-in-groove underlaying the roof in the original construction, for instance, and removing the badly deteriorated back wall altogether instead of trying to repair it or replacing the hip roof with a gable roof.

“The original plan was labor intensive and requires more expensive materials to complete the project,” he said later. “There’s a considerable difference between the (existing) drawings and what the new ones would be, but we will not know (how much we can shave from the cost) until the final drawings are completed and it goes out for bid.”

While they’d have to ask the architect to redo his plan before the job could be bid out, he said it could possibly save the city tens of thousands of dollars in materials as well as labor costs.

“The contractor figures … we’d still be about $8,900 short to put the roof on and do the demo in the back of it, make it a nice area,” he said, suggesting they ask City Manager Jim Mavromatis to have the architect revisit his plan.

“It doesn’t really take a vote or anything,” he added. “I’m just asking for Jim to reach out to Mike Thompson to have him redraw his drawings, then put (it) out for bid. We’d still have that option to reject that bid later. And he said the contractor said that price may be high, and I would rather my budget be high in the bid coming low than vice versa. Does anybody have any questions.

Albaugh said he understands why council is worried about spending money on non-essentials, “(but) I’m just worried if we walk away … we’ll never walk back to it.”

Council also:

• Accepted Mayor Jerry Barilla’s recommendation that they appoint former Councilman Willie Paul to the city’s Historical Landmarks Commission.

• Agreed to start meetings in January, February and March at 7 p.m. “to see how it works out.”

• Adopted emergency legislation authorizing the city manager to enter into a Water Supply Revolving Loan Account agreement for the water filtration plant upgrade and dedicating a repayment source.