YSU students would do better with fewer parking spaces

YSU students would do better with fewer parking spaces

EDITOR:

Tearing down YSU’s Lincoln Avenue parking lot and replacing it with a surface lot is the best available option for the university.

The demolition of the 1,278-space garage has been approved by the university’s board of trustees. The plan is to replace it with a 375-space surface parking lot. Although the Student Government Association and many students might disagree with this proposal, it is the best option the university has for the parking deck also known as “M-2.” Not only is it the least expensive option, it also provides options to make it the most environmentally friendly choice.

The university has proposed three other options, the first being renovating the deck, which will cost $4.1 million and only give the deck a 15-year life span. The second option would be to tear down and replace the deck, which will cost an estimated $25 million. The third option would be to demolish the deck and provide students with multiple surface lots to replace the parking spaces lost due to the demolition. This option will cost the university an estimated $8.67 million.

If the university chooses to demolish the deck and replace it with one surface lot, we would be losing about 900 parking spaces. To counteract this problem the university has been trying to invent environmentally friendly options for commuter students. A committee has been developed by the university to jumpstart this “green” way of thinking.

One of the options the committee, headed by Paul Kobulnicky, proposed is to create a “park and ride” type of program. This would help commuter students by setting up points near their hometowns where they would be able to catch a bus to bring them to campus. Some of the cities that have been targeted in this proposition are Canfield, Boardman and Poland.

Another option that has been proposed by the committee is a carpooling program, where commuters would be able to get together and ride in one car to campus. This would be a big change for the university, because not only would it help with parking issues, but it would help students save on gasoline as well.

Keeping the “M-2” parking deck by either rebuilding or renovating would just encourage students to be less conscious of the environment. Students would still drive solo to campus and not even think twice about carpooling or partaking in public transportation. Demolishing the deck will give students a different outlook on the way they currently commute to school.

ASHLEY KERMEC

Girard

Just pick up a shovel

EDITOR:

Recently, I had the opportunity to read Time. What I found was report after report about how some remote area of some remote country is ripe for the picking by some terrorist group. Why? Because their government hasn’t done enough to satisfy their economic needs. So, instead of picking up a shovel and digging a foundation, or diverting a stream, or sinking a well, or planting a seed, they choose to pick up a gun and kill their neighbor.

What motivates people to sit around waiting for government to do for them when they can do for themselves and then turn to violence when that magical elixir doesn’t arrive? The answer escapes many Americans. It especially escapes them when the question arises in their own country. The recent passage of the health-care bill in the House is a prime example.

Make no mistake; the health care bill is not about improving the health of the American people. If it was, it would be filled with shovels like tort reform, government run health clinics, and access to Medicare/Medicaid for pre-existing conditions. Instead it is filled with guns like reduced payments to doctors, limited access to services, mandates, taxes and penalties. It is simply a wealth and power grab by a bunch of Socialists and their ardent sympathizers.

The liberals pushing this legislation would rather vilify insurance companies, which brought affordable health care to 85 percent of the American people, than show any distrust of Socialist government, which, since the French Revolution, has brought us the guillotine, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and Pol Pot. Socialism/Communism has been a failure for most of the people who have been forced to endure it. But apparently history means nothing to these angry tools of the Socialist cause.

Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe American Socialists will be different than Russian or Chinese or Cambodian Socialists. Maybe that is their “Hope,” that these new Socialists have “Changed.”

THOMAS MASKELL

Poland

Something’s gotta give

EDITOR:

We cannot afford years of medical care like we have now. You must put price controls on health care. The best and only way to do this is to extend Medicare to everyone.

When will the Republicans and Democrats quit playing politics and do what is right for this country and its people?

PAUL SHANABARGER

New Springfield

Landlords, don’t let your houses devolve into eyesores

EDITOR:

This should be of interest to the entire community of Youngstown.

On Oct. 21 and Oct. 28, abandoned and neglected houses were burnt to the ground by arsonists. True, these houses should have been demolished years ago, especially with them being located only a half block north of the campus of YSU. These houses and the ones still existing have been nothing but eyesores to students past and future and the families that support them to achieve a higher education and career goal. Although we’ve lost some beautiful homes of yesteryear to the plight of drug abusers and vagrants, a beacon of hope and a good future arises from the ashes.

The day after the Pennsylvania Avenue fires occurred, my landlord, David Reese, used his financial resources to secure any passageways to the inside of the remaining seven houses that still stand as eyesores. He doesn’t own any of these properties, but out of heart and pride he used his money to supply materials and fund the cost of labor to better secure these remaining properties that still exist so close to fraternity houses and a YSU dormitory.

I find it to be a shame that more landlords throughout the city do not take an interest in “their” neighborhoods and only worry about the rent from the properties they own.

I can only hope that other property owners across our community will one day do whatever it takes to secure their neighborhoods and the people within and to help maintain the safety and health of the unmentioned heroes, our valiant firemen.

STEVEN DEMIDOVICH

Youngstown