I don't think anyone questions that some corner store owners are honest businessmen and women who provide a needed service to Youngstown's neighborhoods, and I don't think there's much debate that others run sub-standard operations that attract criminal activity and and severely violate both health and building codes.
To call community leaders fighting to improve their neighborhoods "critics" or opponents to legitimate corner store business owners demonstrates Bertram's shallow understanding of the issues.
Lumping legitimate owners in with owners who run sub-standard operations as though they are one united group demonstrates his intent to polarize people and sensationalize a complicated issue that instead should be approached with thoughtful and honest dialogue.
I benefit from taxes, just like everyone else in any community. I use public roads, public sewers and bridges, just like everyone who works in Youngstown, whether they live in the city or not. What's wrong with paying taxes when it helps to make our community a better place?
Yeah, there's cronyism and corruption, crime, blight and other serious issues: these problems plague our entire Valley. We need to work as a community to solve these challenges, not run and hide from them like selfish cowards because we can afford to. Is that really the kind of place we want to live in? Is that the kind of society we want to create for our children?
I'm sorry, Carl, but I just don't buy the 'run away' attitude. That's exactly what transformed parts of Youngstown and other communities in our Valley into what you like to call the "destroyed ghetto."
I'm tired of people telling my generation to give up on our own community, where our friends and family were born and raised. We deserve to be proud of the place we live and it ought to be everyone's job to make it a place where we can thrive and succeed.
Youngstown is a town that was founded on hard work and ingenuity. It's going to take hard work to make our city a great place to live again, and there are many amazing people all across our region that are striving tirelessly to make that happen.
I'm confident that if we work hard and use our talents, skills, creativity, and ingenuity, we can make our city a great place. Don't we owe that to our ancestors and to the youth of our community?
I hate to break it to you, but that "move out of the city" attitude is exactly what's keeping our city down!
If the Mahoning Valley is to have a future, we need to get serious as a region about reinvesting in our city. Dull, boring suburbs aren't going to keep the majority of our young, creative, and entrepreneurial people here. 90% of the new jobs created in this country are through new and small businesses, most of which are created by young people like me.
We also need to get real about addressing the deep-rooted social problems that face our Valley and work together to resolve them. Racism exists in our Valley, and it's a strong and degenerative force that's only worked toward our demise. We need to acknowledge this and change local business, housing, education, and political practices that institutionalize racism. We also need to get real about helping the poor and distressed youth of our region to thrive and succeed if we hope to have any future at all.
I'm a working class boy born and raised in the City of Youngstown who has lived in the inner-city (a.k.a. "urbanized America"). I'm away at school now, but when I move back, the only place I'd even consider is in the city. And for the record, the only crime I've ever committed is trespassing to help my neighbors board up abandoned homes to keep my community safe.
My challenge to you, the naysayers, is to put up or shut up. Many Youngstown residents are doing fantastic things to better their neighborhoods all over the city. I challenge you (whether you live in the city or not) to take part in these efforts. If you truly care about the future of our Valley, our children, and the improvement of American society, I suspect that you will rise to this challenge.
If anyone needs help finding a neighborhood group, school program, of nonprofit organization in Youngstown with which you can volunteer your time to help make our city a better place to live, contact me at atek101@gmail.com and I'll gladly point you in the right direction.
This isn't new news. Obviously a township with a regional commercial center is going to have people from other municipalities that contribute to the crime rate.
Furthermore, pointing fingers at us here in Youngstown isn't going to solve your problems, Boardman. The crime problems faced in our community are largely connected to the greater socioeconomic ills of our region. Through unethical business practices, poor public policy, and selfish personal choices, we have concentrated our Valley's poverty into highly distressed neighborhoods. No number of police officers is going to change that reality for us.
We need to step it up as a community to make our region healthy again. We're all to blame for the mess we're in.
Am I missing something, or is this still the 1960s? Who is moving to the suburbs? From where? Last I checked, Boardman, Austintown, and many of the burbs are losing population. The few burbs that gained population did so at the expense of the others, and the region as a whole is losing population by the thousands. Why are we widening new roads when our existing infrastructure is falling apart?
Investing money in areas along the urban fringe is downright foolish for a region with a shrinking population. We need to be spending our taxpayer dollars on repairing what we already have, which, as it stands, is more than we can afford to maintain.
The price of gas (or fuel in general) will continue to be an issue so long as our society is solely dependent on cars to get everywhere we need to go on a daily basis. You can blame it on any politician you want, but we need to make smarter and more sustainable living choices if we expect this situation to ever change.
We need to live closer together and closer to the places we work, play, shop, and to where our kids go to school. We need to advocate for housing options that are more dense, so that our region can support options like mass transit, which becomes more economical the more people use it.
Locally speaking, we have a center city (Youngstown) with the infrastructure to support 200,000 people, predominantly in single-family dwellings. Yet we continue to build new auto-dependent development further and further out on the periphery of our Valley. It's simply not logical, especially for a shrinking region, and it's going to take local entrepreneurs and smart choices on our part to reverse this trend.
Something definitely needs to be done to address this issue, though, especially in our neighborhoods.
Dumpers don't seem to care whether a vacant lot is next to someone's home or an old industrial site, they indiscriminately dump their trash and waste right in the middle of city neighborhoods with no regard for nearby families, homeowners, or children.
It's bad enough we have to deal with vacant homes in our neighborhoods, we don't need them covered in trash too.
While I'm not sure surveillance cameras are going to be enough to keep dumpers from doing this, I applaud Council for trying to at least do something to address the issue.
It's our responsibility to do something, too. We, as residents of the city, can't take this sitting down: we need to report dumpers to the police when we see them in action. And on top of that, we need to organize cleanups of dumping sites in our neighborhoods for the safety of our kids and to deter this type of activity from happening again.
Okay, did this article really have the acronym "BFF" in it? That made me chuckle.
The Chamber of Commerce is supposed to represent the interests of local business. I don't really see what public bargaining has to do with local business, so why even bring it up? This seems blatantly political...and as someone considering starting a small business in the Valley someday, I'm not sure if the Chamber is really representing my interests. Running a business is certainly about profit, but it shouldn't be about profit at the expense of people. It's also about making an honest living and about producing quality goods and services for your community. Call me an idealist, but this is America. I'm all about individualism, but greed's not something we should condone or support as a society.
There's a measure of tact and neutrality you need to have as an organization like the Chamber, in my opinion at least. I'm not saying Betras is entirely in the right, either, but the Chamber of Commerce is more responsible for being non-biased on issues like this than the Democratic Party Chairman.
Attack on store owner was obscene
In addition, I think we can all agree that senseless violence against a store owner (or anyone else in our community) should never be tolerated.
April 29, 2012 at 9:23 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Attack on store owner was obscene
I don't think anyone questions that some corner store owners are honest businessmen and women who provide a needed service to Youngstown's neighborhoods, and I don't think there's much debate that others run sub-standard operations that attract criminal activity and and severely violate both health and building codes.
To call community leaders fighting to improve their neighborhoods "critics" or opponents to legitimate corner store business owners demonstrates Bertram's shallow understanding of the issues.
Lumping legitimate owners in with owners who run sub-standard operations as though they are one united group demonstrates his intent to polarize people and sensationalize a complicated issue that instead should be approached with thoughtful and honest dialogue.
April 29, 2012 at 9:20 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Robberies, shootings, juvenile crime plague city
All of that's changing, Carl, and it's the young people in our city that are making it happen. Give it ten years, and you'll be sorry that you left.
October 11, 2011 at 11:02 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Robberies, shootings, juvenile crime plague city
I benefit from taxes, just like everyone else in any community. I use public roads, public sewers and bridges, just like everyone who works in Youngstown, whether they live in the city or not. What's wrong with paying taxes when it helps to make our community a better place?
Yeah, there's cronyism and corruption, crime, blight and other serious issues: these problems plague our entire Valley. We need to work as a community to solve these challenges, not run and hide from them like selfish cowards because we can afford to. Is that really the kind of place we want to live in? Is that the kind of society we want to create for our children?
I'm sorry, Carl, but I just don't buy the 'run away' attitude. That's exactly what transformed parts of Youngstown and other communities in our Valley into what you like to call the "destroyed ghetto."
I'm tired of people telling my generation to give up on our own community, where our friends and family were born and raised. We deserve to be proud of the place we live and it ought to be everyone's job to make it a place where we can thrive and succeed.
Youngstown is a town that was founded on hard work and ingenuity. It's going to take hard work to make our city a great place to live again, and there are many amazing people all across our region that are striving tirelessly to make that happen.
I'm confident that if we work hard and use our talents, skills, creativity, and ingenuity, we can make our city a great place. Don't we owe that to our ancestors and to the youth of our community?
October 11, 2011 at 5:58 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Robberies, shootings, juvenile crime plague city
I hate to break it to you, but that "move out of the city" attitude is exactly what's keeping our city down!
If the Mahoning Valley is to have a future, we need to get serious as a region about reinvesting in our city. Dull, boring suburbs aren't going to keep the majority of our young, creative, and entrepreneurial people here. 90% of the new jobs created in this country are through new and small businesses, most of which are created by young people like me.
We also need to get real about addressing the deep-rooted social problems that face our Valley and work together to resolve them. Racism exists in our Valley, and it's a strong and degenerative force that's only worked toward our demise. We need to acknowledge this and change local business, housing, education, and political practices that institutionalize racism. We also need to get real about helping the poor and distressed youth of our region to thrive and succeed if we hope to have any future at all.
I'm a working class boy born and raised in the City of Youngstown who has lived in the inner-city (a.k.a. "urbanized America"). I'm away at school now, but when I move back, the only place I'd even consider is in the city. And for the record, the only crime I've ever committed is trespassing to help my neighbors board up abandoned homes to keep my community safe.
My challenge to you, the naysayers, is to put up or shut up. Many Youngstown residents are doing fantastic things to better their neighborhoods all over the city. I challenge you (whether you live in the city or not) to take part in these efforts. If you truly care about the future of our Valley, our children, and the improvement of American society, I suspect that you will rise to this challenge.
If anyone needs help finding a neighborhood group, school program, of nonprofit organization in Youngstown with which you can volunteer your time to help make our city a better place to live, contact me at atek101@gmail.com and I'll gladly point you in the right direction.
October 11, 2011 at 2:37 a.m. permalink suggest removal
Nonresidents commit most serious crimes in Boardman
This isn't new news. Obviously a township with a regional commercial center is going to have people from other municipalities that contribute to the crime rate.
Furthermore, pointing fingers at us here in Youngstown isn't going to solve your problems, Boardman. The crime problems faced in our community are largely connected to the greater socioeconomic ills of our region. Through unethical business practices, poor public policy, and selfish personal choices, we have concentrated our Valley's poverty into highly distressed neighborhoods. No number of police officers is going to change that reality for us.
We need to step it up as a community to make our region healthy again. We're all to blame for the mess we're in.
July 17, 2011 at 10:21 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Western Reserve Road project to begin after July 4 holiday
Am I missing something, or is this still the 1960s? Who is moving to the suburbs? From where? Last I checked, Boardman, Austintown, and many of the burbs are losing population. The few burbs that gained population did so at the expense of the others, and the region as a whole is losing population by the thousands. Why are we widening new roads when our existing infrastructure is falling apart?
Investing money in areas along the urban fringe is downright foolish for a region with a shrinking population. We need to be spending our taxpayer dollars on repairing what we already have, which, as it stands, is more than we can afford to maintain.
June 27, 2011 at 12:07 a.m. permalink suggest removal
Drivers aghast at $4.15 a gallon
The price of gas (or fuel in general) will continue to be an issue so long as our society is solely dependent on cars to get everywhere we need to go on a daily basis. You can blame it on any politician you want, but we need to make smarter and more sustainable living choices if we expect this situation to ever change.
We need to live closer together and closer to the places we work, play, shop, and to where our kids go to school. We need to advocate for housing options that are more dense, so that our region can support options like mass transit, which becomes more economical the more people use it.
Locally speaking, we have a center city (Youngstown) with the infrastructure to support 200,000 people, predominantly in single-family dwellings. Yet we continue to build new auto-dependent development further and further out on the periphery of our Valley. It's simply not logical, especially for a shrinking region, and it's going to take local entrepreneurs and smart choices on our part to reverse this trend.
May 6, 2011 at 2:45 p.m. permalink suggest removal
City to buy cameras to nab illegal dumpers
Something definitely needs to be done to address this issue, though, especially in our neighborhoods.
Dumpers don't seem to care whether a vacant lot is next to someone's home or an old industrial site, they indiscriminately dump their trash and waste right in the middle of city neighborhoods with no regard for nearby families, homeowners, or children.
It's bad enough we have to deal with vacant homes in our neighborhoods, we don't need them covered in trash too.
While I'm not sure surveillance cameras are going to be enough to keep dumpers from doing this, I applaud Council for trying to at least do something to address the issue.
It's our responsibility to do something, too. We, as residents of the city, can't take this sitting down: we need to report dumpers to the police when we see them in action. And on top of that, we need to organize cleanups of dumping sites in our neighborhoods for the safety of our kids and to deter this type of activity from happening again.
May 6, 2011 at 9:29 a.m. permalink suggest removal
Betras battles the Chamber
Okay, did this article really have the acronym "BFF" in it? That made me chuckle.
The Chamber of Commerce is supposed to represent the interests of local business. I don't really see what public bargaining has to do with local business, so why even bring it up? This seems blatantly political...and as someone considering starting a small business in the Valley someday, I'm not sure if the Chamber is really representing my interests. Running a business is certainly about profit, but it shouldn't be about profit at the expense of people. It's also about making an honest living and about producing quality goods and services for your community. Call me an idealist, but this is America. I'm all about individualism, but greed's not something we should condone or support as a society.
There's a measure of tact and neutrality you need to have as an organization like the Chamber, in my opinion at least. I'm not saying Betras is entirely in the right, either, but the Chamber of Commerce is more responsible for being non-biased on issues like this than the Democratic Party Chairman.
April 7, 2011 at 10:07 a.m. permalink suggest removal