The youth center inside the Martins Ferry Recreation Center currently sits empty and idle.
This wasn’t a planned closing nor was it the intention of Martins Ferry Mayor John Davies and city and park district leaders to deny entry, albeit temporarily. However, a couple of individuals took it upon themselves recently to cause a significant amount of damage to some of the equipment and walls inside the youth center.
“The information has been all turned over to the Martins Ferry Police Department and they will handle it from here,” a disappointed Davies noted. “They probably caused a couple of thousand dollars worth of damage.”
The drywall now has a number of holes in it, and the vandals damaged both the pool table and air hockey table that were featured in the center. Many of these items were donated free of charge to the center.
The center first opened during the summer and has provided the youth of Martins Ferry with a place to hang out and have a little fun each day. Davies noted there had been minor issues in the past, but nothing of this magnitude.
“It is a place for the youth to go and get out of the elements, have a little fun playing air hockey, pool,” Davies said. “It was two kids who caused most of the damage. It’s been going on for a while, but they finally took it too far.”
The youth center itself doesn’t have a director, but there are cameras placed throughout it as means of a deterrent. That, too, may need to change according to the mayor.
“I don’t think we’re going to open it back up for a little while,” Davies said. “We may need a director and they’ll need supervision all of the time.
“They just destroyed the place and that’s the taxpayers’ money.”
All other recreation center activities and events still will be continued as planned. It’s only the youth center that’s affected and will be closed for the immediate future while a plan is put into place to prevent this from happening again.
Successful Paving Season Wraps Up
City of Martins Ferry work crews will finish paving Seabrights Lane today, capping off a successful paving season.
When the plan was announced in March, it called for roughly $1.2 million in funding to be utilized to get a number of streets paved. The bulk of that funding came between money generated by the county through its permissive taxes, along with redirected city income tax collections from the general fund.
What resulted is a number of streets being paved with no added cost to the citizenry—a win-win for the town and the taxpayers.
“We borrowed $1.2 million (total) to get the paving done,” Davies said. “The funding from the county by itself generates only about $30,000 per year, which is about a small city block, and, at that rate, we’d never get anything done.”
Things certainly got done this time.
Portions of Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth streets were paved, along with areas in Crawford Heights, Floral Valley, Hillendale, Pearl Street, and a piece of Adams Street.
The paving project on Pearl was finished up last week, and the Seabrights’ portion should be done today.
That’s not the end of the money, nor the paving project, however.
Carlisle Street is also slated to receive some attention, but with the weather no longer ideal for paving, it’s been moved to the spring.
“When we first started, we picked three subdivisions, plus sixth, eighth, and ninth, heavy traffic areas that encompass a lot of residents,” Davies said. “After that, we went to the street committee and city council to pick the others.
“We used part of the income tax to help pay for the paving, with no increase for anybody. We just leveraged our money.”
