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Monuments won’t save our history, but saving our library will
DEAR EDITOR:
Kudos to Sculptor Tom Antonishak, Organizer Dr. Anthony Lattanzio, Mayor Tim Sicafuse, and the generous donors behind Poland's stunning new President William McKinley statue. It proves what our community can achieve when we honor our heritage.
Yet, there is a bitter irony here. In 1964, the historic Main Street home where a young McKinley lived was demolished. Today, that piece of our Ohio and American history is an asphalt parking lot, marked only by a sign. Now, we risk losing our library -- the true architectural and intellectual heartbeat of our village.
At this rate, we can tear down the library next and replace it with a marker that reads: “Here used to be a building where people read about the guy whose house we also tore down.”
A statue cannot host community gatherings, house books, or preserve our town's real character. If we aren’t careful, our future will consist of standing in a soulless village, staring at monuments that mourn the very history we destroyed ourselves.
Let this statue of President McKinley as a young man living in Poland serve as a turning point. If we can rally together to build monuments, we can -- and must -- come together to save the Poland Library.
KATHY MILLER
Poland
Those who were elected: Don't disappoint us
DEAR EDITOR:
Well, the ads are over; the back-and-forth accusations, personal attacks and elect-me promises have ended.
The popular electorates have spoken. As it has been described, it was a "Blue Wave," throwing out the old and replacing the majority with Democratic Party affiliates.
Several reasons are being tossed around as to why this was a clean sweep:
No longer wanting the country to be run under current administration policies; disapproving of the current questionable war with Iran; and being tired of being shown the demolition and expansion of the white house grounds, and all the gold fixtures and expensive marble being installed. All while the average citizen is attempting to move on with higher and higher fuel, grocery and medical costs.
Whatever the reason, the time now is to listen to the people, focus on the obvious concerns, e.g., inflation, questionable war expenditures, and the obvious corruption in the White House.
Let us put aside some of the other concerns, valid as they may be, and bring us to a point where the choice between food and medication, the discussion with our allies, and our foreign enemies is one of diplomacy, formal diplomacy, and not necessarily coercive diplomacy.
Affordability, not being a hoax, can be addressed by proper fiscal policies, reducing taxes for all, and by cutting government spending. The Iran war has cost the United States so far well over $103 billion.
Supply chain improvements, enhancing supply chains, can alleviate shortages that result in high prices. Reducing questionable tariffs is a start.
Foreign Diplomacy. We will always have anti-American foreign governments that won't change, but the need to have proper diplomacy, not coercive diplomacy, is a must. Past administrations have used such discussions, and it has endured simply based on the fact that it keeps communication channels open, prevents disagreement, disputes from escalating into war, and creates a strong framework for managing conflicts. We need to bring such discussions back.
If our new regime, elected officials, make the above a priority, we will, and I feel a little uncomfortable saying this simply based on its affiliation, but Make America Great Again.
God Bless America.
JOHN LESEGANICH
Canfield
Mahoning County candidates, take down your signs
DEAR EDITOR:
As I drive around Mahoning County, I am very disturbed about the hundreds of political signs that are still up all over the county, in particular Mark Hanni and Heather Fronk.
Most of the Democrats who put signs up were asked by their leaders to take them down and drop them off at the headquarters. The other party should follow suit.
HAROLD WILSON
Austintown
Who speaks for the people of the Mahoning Valley?
DEAR EDITOR:
I am increasingly frustrated by the president of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber positioning himself as a voice for the Mahoning Valley, particularly when advocating for large-scale data center development.
Let's establish something important: The president of the Regional Chamber is not an elected representative of the people of Mahoning or Trumbull counties. He represents a business organization and its interests. That distinction matters.
While economic development is important, there is a significant difference between promoting business investment and speaking on behalf of the residents who must live with the consequences of that investment.
Data centers raise legitimate questions about electricity demand, water consumption, infrastructure, land use, environmental effects, and the potential impact on surrounding communities. These concerns deserve serious public examination rather than being overshadowed by promises of economic growth.
I also believe it is fair to question whether those enthusiastically promoting these developments would be equally supportive if the facilities were proposed near their own homes. It is much easier to advocate for industrial development when someone else may have to live next to it.
The people of the Mahoning Valley deserve to know who benefits from these projects, how many permanent jobs they will actually create, what public incentives may be offered, and what long-term obligations could fall on local taxpayers and utility customers.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that all economic development is bad or that every data center proposal should automatically be rejected. I am suggesting that economic development must be evaluated on its merits, with meaningful participation from the communities directly affected.
The Regional Chamber is entitled to advocate for its members. However, its president should not be confused with an elected public official or treated as the definitive voice of Valley residents.
The Mahoning Valley belongs to the people who live here, not simply to the business interests seeking to develop it.
It is time for a broader public conversation about who gets to shape our region's future, whose interests are being represented, and whether ordinary citizens are being given the same consideration as developers and business organizations.
Economic development should serve the community, not the other way around.
MICHAEL LEFFLER
Youngstown
Prioritizing first responders' safety keeps Ohio communities safe
DEAR EDITOR:
When incidents happen, the safety of our local communities relies on the quick thinking, preparation, and confidence of our first responders. Specialized programs like the GOSAFER First Responders Safety Training ensure that firefighters and emergency personnel across Ohio get hands-on education and knowledge of natural gas and oil infrastructure before anything happens.
Natural gas and oil operations involve unique site conditions, complex pipeline networks, and potential hazards that require specific safety protocols. Understanding these operational nuances and establishing a unified command can mean the difference between a swift resolution and a dangerous situation. Specialized education gives our local departments the exact tools and hazard awareness they need to navigate complex scenarios safely.
Too often, small or rural fire departments operate on tight budgets and limited staffing, making the time and expense of traveling to off-site training prohibitive. Recognizing these real bandwidth limitations, providing mobile, on-site training directly to local fire houses alongside 24/7 online access removes those barriers. Offering this education free of charge, thanks to local oil and gas producers, ensures that every department, regardless of size or resources, has access to invaluable, real-world instruction that protects both responders and the public.
When local firefighters, county emergency management directors, and state personnel are properly equipped to handle specialized incidents, our entire state benefits. Investing in comprehensive, accessible safety training for those on the front lines isn’t just about professional development, it is an essential step to protect the men and women who keep our neighborhoods safe every day.
BRUCE TAGUE
Executive Director, Ohio Natural Energy Institute
Pataskala
Corporations need legal restraints to protect American families
DEAR EDITOR:
Some people use a simple definition of capitalism to tout its virtues, however such a large topic can not be understood by definition alone; although it's a good start. As everyone in the Mahoning Valley Ohio, my hometown area, knows large corporations have not been kind to American Families. In years past, large steel and auto corporations closed plants to seek cheaper labor and production costs overseas, all in the name of maximizing profits. Then to kick the Valley Families in the teeth, many promised pensions, healthcare and other closure benefits began to disappear. Now in the 2020's it's the healthcare corporations treating Valley Families like profit centers. Hospital closures, whether to maximize profits or for fraudulent practices, and the drain of healthcare staff; doctors, nurses, healthcare aides and local administrative support staff. Now Mercy Healthcare the last hospital system in the Valley is closing the last new-born delivery unit in Warren, all in the name of efficiency. Babies have been delivered in a hospital in Warren since the first hospital opened long ago.
I am not against Capitalism, just how it's used at times to the detriment of American Families. Should large healthcare companies be allowed to maximize shareholder value ? MAYBE THE ANSWER is to limit shareholder returns to 10% or 12% like a utility. They are really a necessary public service and important to American Families. As can be seen from my hometown experience large corporations are always in a hurry to maximize profits and any conflicts with this objective are pushed aside in the name of free market capitalism.
Corporations are creatures of and only exist because of State statute. As can be seen by the just recently concluded midterm elections corporations and billionaires poured over a billion dollars into this years races and most if not all of it was attack ads that provided meaningless information to Family voters. Corporations were wrongly given the right of political speech by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. MAYBE THE ANSWER is to restrict corporate political speech to sending written or internet messages to existing customers or potential customers in their sales area; and don't allow corporate political spending on broadcast or internet media or lobby politicians or other organizations. Educate the American Family and let them voice their opinions to their representatives.
Social security and Medicare could be put back on a solid financial footing with simple solutions. MAYBE THE ANSWER is immediately removing the payroll cap on the Employer's 6.2% contribution and expand this employer tax to cover stock option compensation; and for Medicare impose the additional .9% addyMedicare tax on Employers, as is currently done to high earning employees, and expand it to stock option compensation.
CARL CASALE
The Villages, Fla.
Athletes' arrogance and the American flag
DEAR EDITOR:
Who do these athletes think they are protesting the National Anthem and the Flag?
A lot of people fought and died to protect the freedoms they enjoy. If it’s so bad here, give up your insane pay and mansions and move to Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam or Iran. (Just don’t take your medical weed!)
I can’t do what they do, but I’m sure they can’t do what I did for a long time. It looks easy when plan A works: rolling a car back on its wheels while blocking only one lane. There is a lot of physics involved -- mass, gravity, inertia, and traction.
LeBron angers me the most. He probably makes more in one year than I have made in my life. Obviously his physical ability outranks his mental ability. He should respect the symbols of the people that gave him the freedom he has.
I saw Rosie O'Donnell come back to host Jimmy Kimmel's show. I also saw a video of Ellen Degeneres saying she was coming back too. Does that mean the evil orange man won? I guess the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence! I bet it’s the same brown or browner when you take off the TDS goggles. Why didn’t Rosie get arrested for her mean posts? (They do that in the UK.) So much for freedom of speech. What’s in the water in Britain? Before Ellen went there, she was not bad-looking. In the last video I saw, she looked like Prince Charles with more hair.
After reading the Oct. 24-25 editions of Soundoff and Letters to the Editor, I can’t agree more with your readers from Canfield.
It’s only “common sense” to realize it’s harder to build/rebuild anything than to tear it down. (I hope you don’t edit out the two nastiest words in the radical left vocabulary -- “common sense.”) It seems they don’t want to use a wrecking ball but a controlled implosive demolition with the charges they placed earlier. They want to have the commies set the country on fire and set the fuses.
In closing, I used to think I was the one screwed up. It’s scary that in my old age, I’m saner than half of Congress. People don’t have to agree about everything to work well together. I was taught that is what the Founders intended.
TIM VAN DYKE
Struthers
DEAR EDITOR:
Congratulations on our 250th birthday, except for the last 120 not-so-glorious years, at least as far as the German community was concerned.
We spilled our blood fighting the English and the Indians. Labored and sweated, hacking civilization out of the wilderness. And along came Wilson and Roosevelt, who sold us out, turning us back into a British colony, by creating the greatest hate campaign in modern times.
Our people were so “kowtowed” they did not know which way to turn. With it came government-condoled home invasions and internment camps (not just for Japanese, but also for German and Italian citizens).
But not just camps here in the U.S., but also in Eastern Europe, where the German pioneers were extirpated by the Slavs, Poles, Czechs and Russians with full knowledge of the Allies.
The “Protocols of Prejudice” were followed even by the church, as evidenced by the closure of our German parish and school that stood for 150 years. With the closure, 150 years of community vanished.
It was shameful that not even a commemorative statue or plaque was put in place where the church once stood.
FRANK ENGELMANN
Graduate, St. Joseph Elementary School, Ursuline High School, YSU and survivor of Allied concentration camps, Jarek, Gakowa, Krushievl (1944-1948)
Kent
Donald Trump’s betrayal of the American Dream
DEAR EDITOR:
Just two years in office, our American Dreams were dashed by just one man.
Our anguish played out in the 1966 song, “Hard Times Be Over” by Jim and Ingrid Croce:
"Mr. Baker used to be a big executive; now he’s selling apples on the corner.
Paper says that things are getting better; maybe pretty soon hard times be over.
Used to be a time when there was a dividing line between the pigs in mud and those in clover.
Paper says that things are getting better; maybe pretty soon hard times be over.
I just got a letter from a fellow that I used to know; (he) cleaned up in the market but the crash hit him hard.
Now he's selling papers on a small town avenue; Had to sell his house and his wife and even his dog.
Picket lines and bread lines and 'Buddy, do you have a dime?'
Even corner drunks are getting sober; Paper says the things are getting better. Maybe pretty soon hard times be over.
I just got a letter from a fellow that I used to know; (he) cleaned up in the market but the crash hit him hard.
Now he’s selling papers on a small town avenue; Had to sell his house and wife and even his dog.
Picket lines and bread lines and “Buddy, do you have a dime?”.
Even corner drunks are getting sober; Paper says that things are getting better, maybe pretty soon hard times be over.
Paper says the things are getting better; maybe pretty soon hard times be over."
PAUL R. LAWSON
McDonald
Leave the Supreme Court as it was intended
DEAR EDITOR:
Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution requires " one Supreme Court." Inferior federal courts (District and Appellate) may be established by Congress. The Judges of both the Supreme Court and the inferior courts enjoy lifetime tenure, "during good Behavior."
All but a very few have been impeached and removed from office since Congress established the inferior federal district and appellate courts in 1801.
It is highly unlikely that Congress will dismantle the large number of inferior federal courts. Their judges are political appointees, and individual House and Senate members largely control their appointment to the bench -- thus "politicizing" the process.
From time to time there have been factions promoting "packing" the Supreme Court with four more members, up from the current nine, or abolishing it altogether. At least one Democratic Socialist on the ballot has absurdly proposed abolishing it.
In the mid-1930s President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to "pack" the Supreme Court by requiring its Justices over 70 years of age to retire (unconstitutional due to lifetime appointment), and replace them with Roosevelt's by government ideology. Historians may differ whether Roosevelt succeeded or failed. Yes, the Court remained "impacted" at its long standing nine members, but Roosevelt's strategy succeeded by his threat to pack it (even though clearly unconstitutional in demanding the retirement of older Justices).
But, with control of Congress and the White House, Roosevelt's threat to pack the Supreme Court with four more members of his liking to assure his "NEW DEAL" big government scheme was upheld by the Court, his threat worked. Here is how:
Roosevelt needed the votes of four sitting Justices. His "threat" to add four more that would assure his vast New Deal legislation would be upheld caused four of the sitting Justices to cave and switch their votes to uphold Roosevelt's New Deal legislation that introduced the welfare state that has grown to monstrous portions of our economy, now challenging the amount of our National Debt.
This tactic of Roosevelt's makes Gerrymandering appear tame in comparison.
CARL D. RAFOTH
Attorney
Canfield
There different religions, but one community here
DEAR EDITOR:
"A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim walk into the United States Senate ..." sounds like the start of a stale joke, but this historic event will actually take place when the 120th Congress convenes in January.
That is when Jon Ossoff, incumbent Senator from Georgia, James Talarico, senator-elect from Texas, and Abdul El-Sayed, senator-elect from Michigan, take their seats in that august forum. El-Sayed has the distinction of being the first Muslim in our nation's history to be elected to the Senate.
The purpose of my letter is humanitarian rather than political. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are three distinct religions, though they each claim to trace their respective origins back to the same ancestor, Abraham. That familial relationship has, over the centuries, manifested itself both in collaboration and (too often) in conflict.
I can personally attest to one tangible example of such collaboration. In 2010, Habitat for Humanity of Mahoning County embarked on a unique building project: The House of Abraham -- the first ecumenical project ever attempted in our county. It brought together the time, treasure, talents and volunteers from Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Bahá'i faith communities and resulted in the construction of a new energy-efficient home for a low-income family. The home stands today as solid, physical proof that religious, ethnic and racial differences are less important than the common humanity that unites us.
In this season of Thanksgiving when we profess our gratitude for the gifts of family and home, let us not forget that the need for decent affordable shelter in our nation is as acute as ever. Let us rededicate ourselves to foster an environment in which thousands of Houses of Abraham can be built! Happy Thanksgiving.
STEPHEN HANZELY
Poland
Maybe we should keep God out of politics
DEAR EDITOR:
According to Cal Thomas (A wipeout for Republicans, Nov. 9, 2026), the outcome of our recent election somehow revealed an "intellectual and moral vacuum" and "a decline in belief in God and church attendance."
What?
Some of the most ardent believers and religious orders saw the narrow tribe of the current administration using religion to terrify and enslave, monopolize power and profit, and hawk the same violence as a religion we are trying to tame. Thousands of people being killed and property being destroyed with a particular version of God being invoked by all sides in order to promote both terrorist acts and acts of retaliation. As Thomas Paine wrote, "Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving: it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe."
Maybe we should put God on hold, stop the political strategies that leverage religious theology and focus on putting people in office that truly believe in forming a "more perfect" American union as presented in the Preamble to the United States Constitution.
KIM KOTHEIMER
Poland
Cornersburg residents still don't feel safe
DEAR EDITOR:
Two months have passed since Cornersburg residents were awaken by the sound of gunfire and squealing tires. A confrontation had taken place that stemmed from a party at a rented house in the neighborhood. In the melee combatants indiscriminately sprayed bullets into at least four occupied homes and one vehicle. Miraculously, no one was killed.
Nine responding officers arrived and collected shell casings, stolen vehicles and witness statements that failed to identify the perpetrators.
The next morning bullet holes in the homes and vehicle were evident as well as the angst of the neighborhood. After a meeting with our councilman the party site homeowner agreed to de-list the property from the internet.
Now comes word that the home has been listed again and with-it new concerns that violence will return.
That's why I'm urging action on three fronts. First, law enforcement should re-double its efforts to identify and apprehend the shooters. Second, city council should enact common sense legislation that protects neighbors from those that would convert their property into short-term commercial use. Lastly, I urge those that attended the birthday gathering to reconsider their level of cooperation with authorities.
Seventy-plus years of confidence in the peacefulness of the neighborhood was wiped out in one violent incident.
Convictions and policy change could restore some measure of it.
DENNIS CZOPUR
Youngstown