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Youngstown, other Ohio cities aim to dispel Forbes's grim view 
‘It will be an inspiring day,’ an organizer of Saturday’s symposium in Dayton said.
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Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams
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Phil Kidd
YOUNGSTOWN — Mayor Jay Williams and a local community activist will attend a symposium in Dayton of leaders from eight of the 10 communities listed by Forbes as the nation’s fastest-dying cities.
The Forbes 10 Fastest Dying Cities Symposium will bring together government officials, grass-roots activists, concerned citizens, artists and entertainers Saturday from cities on the list, said Peter Benkendorf, an organizer of the event.
“It will be an inspiring day,” he said. “It’s a celebration of these cities. We’re highlighting the innovations of these cities. It’s a starting point. We hope it will be a way to collaborate with other communities to move us all forward.”
The Forbes magazine list, released in an Aug. 5, 2008, article, includes four Ohio cities: Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland. Also on the list were Buffalo, N.Y.; Charleston, W.Va.; Detroit, Mich.; Flint, Mich.; Scranton, Pa., and Springfield, Mass. The latter two cities aren’t sending representatives to the event, Benkendorf said, primarily because of the distance from there to Dayton and the travel expenses.
Traveling with Williams from Youngstown is Phil Kidd, a community organizer with the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, and founder of Defend Youngstown, which promotes the positive aspects of the city.
“We want to articulate what’s going on in the city, how it is moving forward and that it isn’t a dying city,” Kidd said.
Kidd points to the economic success of the Youngstown Business Incubator, downtown revitalization, the creation of neighborhood associations, and the city’s being named by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the 10 best cities to start a business as examples of the Youngstown’s rebirth.
“All of the cities on the list have something to contribute,” he said. “We want to find out what the cities are doing to improve themselves.”
Joshua Zumbrun, the Forbes reporter who wrote the story on the 10 cities, will give the opening remarks at the symposium.
The list was statistically driven based on declining population, unemployment rates and the lack of economic growth.
Each city will have about 30 minutes to make presentations about what positive activities are occurring there.
Each will discuss how their “demise” was greatly exaggerated and share innovative ideas and creative solutions that work in their cities, Benkendorf said.
Later Saturday, there will be music, a photo display and poetry readings from artists from the cities.
skolnick@vindy.com
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Home sales stats are bad even in cities that didn't make the top ten list.....
Wouldn't it make more sense to put these community leaders together with representatives from cities that WEREN'T dying so they could maybe, I don't know, LEARN SOMETHING?????????????? Perhaps spending money on a trip across the state to a symposium with other FAILURES isn't such a great idea when your city is in the middle of a huge financial crisis. That play must come from the fiscally sound playbook of Williams. There is a such thing as a conference call, and anyone with a webcam can have a face to face these days. Costs nothing more than internet access too. Youngstown IS dying, and the ones killing it are those who can't stop spending money on things they WANT, not things they NEED. Get your hand out of the city's pocketbook, Mr (degree in finance)Mayor.
I hope they talk about what they are doing about the wasted potential . Its easy to talk about obvious successes , such as the Downtown , but when you move out to the suburbs there is , as Luke visconti said "work to be done" & Youngstown is "not yet" attractive to business .
They should also talk about the Valley's perceived failures & about how they plan to realise its human capital , much of it on the unemployment & underemployment scapheap .
What about the completion of the Realty Towers apartments ?
Mayor Williams seems to the only one with workable ideas , but he is held back by others who yearn overly for the past. Still , there's enough forward momentum to ensure some progress toward a future which will see Youngstown absorbed into the Mahoning Valley - eventually.
To make it happen sooner will take the black & white communities of the Valley to work together for change.
The status quo , with the Southside ghettoes , hits an outsider to the Valley square between the eyes , but to a lot of longtime Valley residents it isn't so obvious because they have lived with social decay for so long they are are blind to its real cause & cure . They only see the subtext & ignore the heading .
In any case , Youngstown should focus on vocational , consumer & citizen education of all its citizens as priority 1 as only this will lift the poorest out of poverty & restore economic growth to the Valley .
I cant believe these folks are spending time and energy addressing yet another one of those stupid-ass top 10 or top 100 or bottom 10 or bottom 100 whatever lists put out by a rag like Forbes.
This in the very same month that Entrepreneur magazine names Youngstown among the 10 best places in the country to start a business (on the cover no less).
Ignore Forbes - they should be writing those top 10 lists for Letterman instead - then at least people might be mildly amused by them.
"Wouldn't it make more sense to put these community leaders together with representatives from cities that WEREN'T dying so they could maybe, I don't know, LEARN SOMETHING?????????????? "
WHAT A CONCEPT!!! The problem is, those like Jay (and his counter parts like OBrien in Warren, Coleman in Columbus, Jackson in Cleveland, etc. - they think they know it all and they don't want to LEARN anything - they want to DICTATE - THAT IS THE PROBLEM!
Sadly, Y'town is not "dying" - it is long dead and gone, and only when the mentaility of those like Jay is long gone will Y'town have any chance at a comeback. You have to admire the tenacity of those like Phil Kidd who may have good intentions, but if all you have is crap, then all you can make is a crap sandwich. Y'town needs a paradigm shift, and that shift starts at the top - until then ... enjoy the '60s
Youngstown culture is thriving and growing by leaps and bounds. Yes, the financial train is fueled by cocaine.
COCAINE TRAIN !
http://i27.tinypic.com/21cs074.jpg