Are you happy with the way Youngstown is? Seriously. Do you think that those who are in charge in the city government, whether it’s the Mayor or the City Council members, are really doing what it takes to turn the city around from one of poverty, crime, and economic decline? Are they bringing you and the younger generation forward to be able to be competetive in today (and tomorrow’s) economy? Really?
Did you vote in the last city election, or do you only vote in the Presidential Elections? Do you recognize how much of a direct impact that the city leaders have on your life in Youngstown? Well, their actions DIRECTLY effect you and your quality of life, as well as your chances for economic prosperity in Youngstown. Unless you plan on relocating from the city of your birth, or if Youngstown has become your hometown through whatever means, your chances of economic prosperity look bleak unless you’re fortunate enough to land one of the city’s last remaining good-paying jobs. Perhaps you’ve figured out the Web economy and are thriving with an online business, or are in a position where your business has been able to withstand the severe economic downturns that Youngstown has suffered from. Ok, so if so, then that’s good for you Do you think this is the common case and average situation for most of Youngstown and its citizens?
Why do you think this is? Do you think that there’s been serious and substantial steps taken to foster an environment of innovation, entrepreneurship, and a promising job-market in Youngstown? Are companies with good paying jobs coming to the city, or even the area? No, they’re not. Why is that? Are there serious and significant infrastructure projects being undertaken that can assure companies that people will being to reach these jobs? Is there an airport other than the ones in Cleveland and Pittsburg (I.e. — less than an hour away) that executives can get to? Let’s forget about accommodating executives and bosses, but what about for you? Don’t you think that as a citizen of the Mahoning Valley, you deserve to be able to fly in and out of the airport that is right up the road from the city?
Wouldn’t you like to be able to get to Warren Sharon, or heck — even Girard on a light rail train that costs you about $2 to ride? Wouldn’t you like people from the Shenango Valley and New Castle to be able to flow in and out of Youngstown easily and bring their money to shop in our stores, eat in our restaurants, and get service in the hair and nail shops, as well as haircuts in barber shops?
Aren’t you tired of stores and businesses closing and leaving a shell of a once-was place of commerce on a more and more desolate street that used to be full of traffic? Haven’t you grown weary of pot-hole and crater plagued streets tearing up the axles on your car, when an entire industry coud be formed by a meaningful effort to fix them and keep them fixed? Your ears — are they longing to hear something other than “we’re going to clean up the litter” or “we’re going to beautify downtown”, which are efforts that will only bring themselves to be needed again after a few months? What does clean litter-free streets do for your pockets and bank accounts? What good is it to have nice shrubs and bushes along 5th Avenue if you’re not able to access economic tools or reliable high-speed Internet access to conduct your business online or upskill yourself to become more marketable for employment? What good is upskilling anyway when there are no high-paying jobs in Youngstown to apply to?
When do you become fed up with leaders offering you nothing but low-hanging fruit? When do you realize you’ve had enough of the people being elected and doing nothing ground-breaking to create a thriving economic environment in the city — even when they get their hands on $82.7 million dollars of ARP funds? There has to come a point in time when you realize the process for opening a business in Youngstown is onerous and almost prohibitive with all of the red tape and hoops to jump through, waiting periods and such. You may have went to school with these people, perhaps grown up with them, drank beers and shed tears with, but politics is about life, access to resources and economic opportunities. It isn’t a fraternity or social club.
When roughly only 4,500 (out of around 40,000 eligible) people vote in an election where city officials are on the ballot, it send a message that there is no accountability among those who are tasked with leading the city. It’s even more concerning when very few people under the age of 40 cast a ballot in Youngstown.
It has to be said that if you’re concerned with your economic chances and opportunities, and the development of the economic environment of the city of Youngstown for the future residents (your children, or younger loved ones, and fellow citizens who will soon be adults), then being mindful and deeply involved with the politics of the city, and the positions, actions, and MIND-SETS of the leaders is of the utmost importance. There has to be more than around 10% of people in Youngstown voting. Your leaders are not cutting the mustard. Furthermore, the uni-party system grip on the city (I.e. — Democratic stronghold) is highly detrimental. It is so much that many who are Republicans would rather run for office as a Democrat (and thus a Republican in disguise) than dare run on a Republican ticket. Many will argue that Democratic Party policies are ruining the nation, and are job-killing, economic death sentences anyway. Even if that’s not the case, there needs to be something to counter the stronghold that one single party would have anywhere. Without opposition, there simply is no accountability, and under such circumstances — people will suffer.
Youngstowners are behooved to start holding the leaders accountable and stop giving them the “homie pass”, because the results of their policies are abysmal. Population continues to decline, and soon will dip so low that Youngstown will lose its Metropolitan Statistical Area status AND the Federal dollars that come with it. What’s being done to reverse this trend of population loss and brain drain? Do you hear your leaders talking about any plans to address this? The fact is, that there comes a time when applauding or pretending that mediocrity is ok needs to come to an end. This is exactly what Youngstown is getting — mediocre (at best) leadership. Look around the nation at cities comparable in size to Youngstown and who are thriving, and see if you’re getting what you ought be from your leadership and their policies.
Feelings of leaders who might be your homie need to be disregarded when your economic prosperity is on the line, and when you can’t take care of your family. There comes a point when you just have to ask yourself: are you benefitting in any way, shape or form from the “initiatives” or the leaders in Youngstown City Hall? Is anything that they’re doing resulting in more money in your pocket, more opportunity for you to see fruits of your labor (or is there opportunity for meaningful labor), and is there really a better quality of life resulting from their actions and policies in any way at all? At times, it’s nothing more than good theater and feel-good rhetoric that we’re getting from them. They know how to speak the language of “doing something”, and they know how to produce promo/campaign videos which make them look busy.
These are the questions about the Youngstown leaders that you need to not only ask yourself, but to answer honestly to yourself as well.
You may or may not know it if you’re not highly scrutinizing of those in office in Youngstown, but whenever any major development that requires technology or high-level tech skill presents itself in Youngstown, it is contracted to companies and firms from outside of the Mahoning Valley. The most recent example is the traffic and speed-monitoring system, which by the way was not set up to keep school zones safe from speeders, but rather to catch speeders in school zones, and was done by a company from Tennessee, not Youngstown. There are reasons for the use of out of town companies of course, and it’s because of the lack of any company in Youngstown to be able to handle such a project! This is the case largely because no one in city government is taking any initiative at all to develop the environment in which such companies can form organically from within Youngstown, or be attracted from outside of the city to set up operations in Youngstown. Meaningful economic development and environment of tech and innovation-savviness is simply not being done in Youngstown. This is really troubling and sad when you consider the $82.7 million in ARP funding given to the city. There’s virtually nothing being done to invest it in a way that develop the culture of prosperity for the citizens of Youngstown, and ultimately that can produce residual economic growth. The citizens simply have to sit by and watch the money being spent on totally non-productive things and in ways that do nothing that can give them a hand in making Youngstown great, and simply watch a big bag being dumped out on things that do not stir the economic pot of Youngstown.
Youngstown Council members are doing nothing to foster innovation among their constituents, there’s no real entrepreneurship being ideated or encouraged that can really lift people out of poverty. It’s too much of a task for the leaders to think in a futuristic fashion or in a way that requires a bit of mental effort, or perhaps even them learning something new, or (God-forbid) they reach out to consult someone who might know more than them in the area of high-technology and advanced economic theory. They seem to always want to be the smartest people in the room, but who suffers from their pride and ego protection? The citizens of Youngstown. With these leaders, everything is either a hand-out that makes them look like a hero, or it’s a patch on the great wound of financial hardship that can cover a month or two of economic hardship (if that). Does it cure the ailment though?
When anyone with some vision tries speaking to them about anything high-tech, sadly and embarrassingly to anyone who would like to take pride in Youngstown, it’s like speaking a foreign language. The African proverb says “Not knowing is bad, but not wanting to know is worse”, and the Youngstown leaders are simply not wanting to make the effort to learn enough about technology and the Innovation Economy. Is it too hard? Or are they too comfortable with just giving the Youngstown citizens “good enough” (which isn’t good enough as the people continue to slide into poverty and the city continues to crumble in nearly every aspect). They simply aren’t able to engage in those types of conversation about advanced economic development (ask any of them if they’re familiar with the concept of creating markets out of non-consumption, or pull-economics, or able to calculate dollar-cost-benefit ratios), high-technology and programming or coding — which is where the money is made and which is something that can lift people out of poverty or economic hardship like not much other can. When have we heard the Mayor himself mention anything along the lines of innovation based on Web technology? These are things with such an unbelievably low cost of entry when it comes to entrepreneurship when you base them on the Web and Data. Additionally, getting the culture of high-tech, coding, innovation and Web-based going among your people enriches them and equips them with the ability to make highly-valuable improvements to your city, as was the case in Silicon Valley in the mid 20th century. Why does Youngstown miss on this?
It seems as if the only thing that gets funding in Youngstown are clean up projects, beautification efforts, or things that the police need to go into battle against citizens with. Indeed the Youngstown Police Department needs tools to keep themselves safe from and equipped to take on the violent criminals that are prevalent in the streets, but the crime may be better eradicated if the citizens had some form of outlet for their ingenuity to prevent them from even thinking about engaging in criminal activity. Many people in Youngstown are hopeless, and see crime as the only way for them to make money that keeps them out of poverty. There are indeed others who engage in criminal activity on a purely anti-social basis, but perhaps out of frustration and from the psychological conditions that arise from being stuck in an area with little to no economic opportunity. Poverty has a serious and marked psychological effect on a person. What adds insult to injury is city leaders and prominent figures who seem to try guilt them into staying in Youngstown, as opposed to taking their skills and talents elsewhere where they can find better opportunity. Some leaders will make lengthy and poetic social media posts trying to encourage people to stay in Youngstown, yet they will do absolutely nothing to create an environment to legitimately inspire them to stay. People cannot survive on hopes and dreams, feel-good statements, and rhetorical social media posts.
From what the city reports, money will be spent to tear down houses when they could be renovated and used productively to either sell (and make the city some money) or repurpose into things the community could use. With a good portion of the $82.7 million in ARP funds that Youngstown has, the city government feels as if it’s better to tear down houses and create more empty space that will in all likelihood remain undeveloped (which one can argue also contributes to blight), as opposed to renovating them and perhaps sell, or use for incentives for businesses and/or talent to relocate to the city as is being done in many other cities who are looking to attract people. There aren’t any ideas being discussed to look at how the mobility (that is, the lack thereof) of the people is related to economic progress. It’s quite difficult to make meaningful money when you can’t move around efficiently. There isn’t so much of an ideation phase on how a light rail system could be developed, or how a better and more efficient freeway system could contribute to Youngstown’s economic enhancement, or even so much of a look at how a new industry could be set up in Youngstown by meeting one of its own greatest needs — road repair.
Cleaning up the streets of litter isn’t going to contribute to economic development. Yes it’s needed, but it’s nothing to be praised for or to be exalted as being leader doing something substantial. It’s easy, and stopping there is either lazy or indicative of being incompetent when it comes to being a city leader. These leaders deserve no credit for bringing “initiatives” that “accomplish” cleaning up a neighborhood of litter and trash. Merely saying “I’m trying to bring jobs to Youngstown” is empty rhetoric when you’re doing nothing to develop Youngstown into having a high level of education reflected in the percentage of people with bachelors degrees, or further. Nor is it to be taken seriously when you’re not encouraging nor doing things to develop a culture of high tech proficiency and inclination to programming and coding. When you’re only trying to beat a dead horse of manufacturing jobs that are long gone and
The sad fact is that in Youngstown, the current leadership offers its residents nothing but low-hanging fruit. They seem to think of the city as a place that isn’t good enough nor able to reach for anything other than small goals, and should be happy with cute little shrubs downtown or along the sidewalks, more parking spaces, or community gardens, but surely not to expect anything modern and truly enabling like a rail system connecting the cities and suburbs, or even an airport that actually take flights in and out of. Perhaps the case is that the type of civic leadership that Youngstown needs simply does not exist among the population of people eligible to run for office. This is truly sad to see, as someone who travels around the nation and sees economic growth in the most unexpected places, even in cities in the middle of nowhere — like Fargo, ND where the nearest major city is Minneapolis, a cool 240 miles away!
Nothing far reaching nor out-of-the-box in thinking is being done in Youngstown. Anyone who does come around with ideas that could actually turn the city’s course towards economic prosperity is laughed at and attacked by people who demonstrate that they know little to noting about real economics, or that they lack the vision to enable Youngstown to make the great leap that it needs to. If anyone does approach the people who are in the positions of power with any such ideas, they’re either given what is equivalent to polite pats on the heads and empty patronizing replies, or likes on their messages (with no response), or bellicose and grumpy responses as if they’ve been deeply troubled by someone actually presenting them with an idea that could bring Youngstown many steps forward. It all amounts to nothing. Youngstown leaders are chasing away people who have good ideas. They give the coldest shoulder to people who are really thinking of innovative and creative plays to put down to get Youngstown’s economic greatness restored.
Many of them, when they do respond, only do so when their feelings are hurt or their pride bruised up a bit by a public comment which calls out their lack of doing anything meaningful, or if they catch wind that you’re looking for someone to run against them in a political race. Pride being dinged is what gets the current leaders to respond. They think they’re entitled to these positions, people! They think they can continue to skate on by doing the least, and they’ll continue sell the city of Youngstown short as we lose more and more people moving away taking their skill and talents to greener pastuers, as the city’s infrastructure continues to crumble, as the crime rate continues to climb taking more and more victims (especially our young people), as the education incentive steady plummets and continues to keep businesses and good-paying jobs away, and as the poverty rate continues to climb higher and higher as a result of all of these economic failures!
These “leaders” may be your homies, your cuddies, or family, but what are they doing for the city — if you can answer honestly, candidly, and in good conscience? Ask and answer yourself, for the sake of yourself and your loved ones if you truly love your city of Youngstown.
So if the people on the ground in Youngstown want to see change, then they will need to start taking real steps in participating in their political process and in local elections. More than 4,500 people will need to vote for Mayor of Youngstown and City Council. It’s going to take the whole of the 40,000 or so eligible voters. You’re going to have to realize that these elections are not popularity shows for you to vote for your family member or who you went to school with, or who’s the homie, but rather who has a vision and a real plan that’s going to result in YOUR OWN ECONOMIC RISE, and enhance your chances of prosperity. Don’t be satisfied with who’s just going to do litter clean-ups and community picnics, or make cool videos patting themselves on the back for some perceived virtue that they feel makes them entitled to be a city leader. Who’s really going to bring the city of Youngstown forward in a meaningful way? Who’s going to make sure the city develops into an economically prosperous and socially shining one so that your kids have a chance at real prosperity without needing to move to Columbus or further away from Youngstown? This is what you need to be holding these leaders accountable to answering, and proving!
Make sure you are front and center in this year’s city election campaigns and stop accepting mediocrity from candidates who only reach for and low-hanging fruit to pass of to you.
