Stark County is the southern half of the area we cover: Canton, North Canton, Massillon and the townships in between. This page sets out which towns that means, what the creeks, the old canal and the glacial gravel do to asphalt down here, and the rules each city and township applies once a job reaches the road.
Canton, North Canton, Massillon, Louisville and Canal Fulton, plus Jackson, Plain and Lake townships, which takes in Uniontown and Hartville. That is the northern half of the county, the part within reach of Akron. If you are further south and not sure, send the address and you will get a straight answer about whether it is on the map.
Canton sits in the middle of the Nimishillen Creek watershed, which drains about 188 square miles and also takes in North Canton and Louisville. Massillon is on the Tuscarawas River, and the old Ohio and Erie Canal route, now the Towpath Trail, follows that river through Canal Fulton, Massillon and Navarre. Low ground near either system tends to stay damp longer after a thaw, and asphalt over damp ground is asphalt whose base is being tested every time it freezes.
The land between is glacial. Ohio's Geological Survey places the largest kame complex in the state across Geauga, Portage, Summit and Stark counties: knobs of layered sand and gravel left by meltwater at the edge of the ice. Hollows between those knobs held blocks of ice that melted into ponds, and many of those later filled with silt and peat.
What that means for a driveway is simply that the ground can change from one lot to the next. A drive on a gravelly rise sheds water fast. One laid across a filled hollow can sit on softer, wetter material and settle in a saucer shape. The quote says which one yours looks like, because it decides whether a patch will hold or whether the base is the real problem.
The official snowfall for this area is taken at Akron-Canton Airport, a few miles north of North Canton, and it averages about 47 inches a year. The practical effect on a Stark County drive is the salt that comes with it: brine off the road pooled on the apron, slush dripping from cars parked in the same spot all winter, and the snow bank along one edge that melts for weeks in March. Those three places are where the damage on a drive here starts, and where the crack filling and small patches go first.
Canton. An industrial city first, with the Timken works still in the middle of the Nimishillen watershed, and an old housing stock: Census Bureau estimates put roughly half of the city's homes as built before 1940. Where a drive is narrow and hemmed in, as it often is on older city blocks, most of the work is edges: foundation walls, fences and walks cut in by hand.
Massillon. A canal town on the banks of the Tuscarawas, whose port opened in 1828 and whose first steel furnace was lit in 1915, by the city's own history.
North Canton. The city grew up around the Hoover Company plant on Maple Street, a site of about 85 acres in the middle of town, and the neighbourhoods spread out from there.
The townships. Jackson, Plain and Lake are townships rather than cities, so the road in front of a house there may belong to the township, the county or the state, and that decides who you deal with at the apron. Jackson Township's own Highway Division looks after 208 miles of township roads and publishes a roadside drainage policy. Township roads often have a ditch rather than a curb, so a drive crosses it on a culvert pipe, and a collapsed or blocked culvert floods the bottom of the drive.
The apron, the curb and the public sidewalk normally sit in the public right-of-way. Every Stark County government we checked controls work there, and each does it differently. From their own published pages and forms:
Sealing and crack filling a home driveway behind the sidewalk do not appear as permit work in any of these rules. The contractor side is different: North Canton and Louisville register every contractor before any work, so jobs there go ahead only with a registered contractor, and a commercial lot being resurfaced in North Canton carries the city's fee. Apron work in Canton, Massillon or on a county road goes ahead only when the paving contractor on that job holds the license that city or the Engineer requires; if not, you are told and the rest is quoted without it. Fees change, so the current figure goes on your quote.
Canton's permits cover driveway, curb and sidewalk work in the public right-of-way. A seal coat on the private part of the drive is not listed. Replacing the apron is, and only a Canton-licensed contractor can pull that permit.
Yes, as a paving job under a Massillon permit, done by a contractor licensed with the City Engineer. The rest of the drive can be sealed once the new asphalt has cured, which usually means the following season.
It could be the township, the county or the state. The County Engineer's road map answers it by address, and that tells you whose permit covers the apron.
No. That is usually the culvert or the grade. Sealer does not move water. It gets looked at, and the quote says whether it is a patch, a culvert question for the township, or something to leave alone.
Next door: Summit County to the north, around Akron.
