124 Business View - July 2015
divisions of national corporations, including the Gen-
eral Motors Lordstown Assembly Complex.
However, with the collapse of the U.S. steel industry
in the 1970s, Warren, like many other municipalities
throughout Ohio and the Midwest, began to experi-
ence a painful, decades-long, economic decline; a de-
cline which it has only recently been able to confront
and reverse.
Paul Makosky is the Head of the Engineering, Plan-
ning, and Building Department for the City of War-
ren, Ohio. He talks about where his city has been and
where he sees it going in the years to come. His is an
appropriate perspective when one considers that the
town’s motto is: “Celebrate our History and Create our
Future.”
“The City of Warren has been dealt a tough hand at
this point in our history. I think that we can predomi-
nantly be viewed as a rust-belt community. We’ve had
a significant loss of manufacturing jobs and popula-
tion, as well. There’s also the corresponding loss of
revenues that make it particularly difficult to properly
sustain our infrastructure. More affluent or prominent
communities may not have the issues of sustainability
that we have. But there are a lot of communities that
experience the same challenges that we face here in
Warren. So what do we do to sustain everything that
we have and still find a way to move forward with an
optimistic sense of the future? How are we going to
build and grow?”
Makosky’s department assists the city administration
and City Council in the development of a Capital Im-
provement Plan (CIP). The department secures grant
funds to complete projects and develops plans, specifi-
cations, and estimates in accordance with the plan. In
the years between 2008 and 2014, over $32.6 million
was spent on infrastructure projects in the City of War-
ren, Ohio. The funds came from a mixture of Federal
Highway Administration monies, the Ohio Department
