Promoting high-tech industry right for Ohio

Promoting high-techindustry right for Ohio
EDITOR:
Gov. Taft recently visited our company, Altronic, Inc., to promote his Third Frontier Project initiative. Altronic is a technology-based company producing high tech products for the oil and gas industry. In the future, high paying jobs will increasingly come from the knowledge and technology based sectors of the economy.
Although Ohio has made progress in technology-based businesses, it has not kept pace with the nation as a whole. One key to addressing this situation is wise investment by the state to promote advanced product and manufacturing technology development in the private sector. To mirror successful examples elsewhere in the country, Ohio's extensive university system must be a partner in this endeavor.
Another vital part of the solution is increasing the percentage of Ohioans with a college education. Ohio Board of Regents statistics show a clear correlation over the past 40 years between college degrees and per capita income. Compared to the nation overall, the proportion of Ohio's population with a bachelor's degree has declined since 1960 from about 91 percent of the national average to 82 percent. Over the same period, per capita income has decreased from 107 percent of the national average to 95 percent. Reversing this trend will require an increased commitment from the state to undergraduate higher education.
Gov. Taft's Third Frontier initiative is a positive long-term response to this declining trend which affects all Ohioans. His program deserves our support.
BRUCE R. BEEGHLY
Girard
X The writer is president of Altronic, Inc.
Burdman Group should have been more careful
EDITOR:
In response to the article in The Vindicator on March 22, titled "Burdman takes steps for security," I say, too little -- too late. On Thursday, Feb. 28, my nephew, Wynn Bogan, a Burdman client, was the victim of a shooting spree by John Staples, also a Burdman client. The article states that the Burdman Group has taken steps to prevent crimes like this from happening again. Monthly, $15,000 is being spent to secure the Burdman Home on Broadway Avenue and the Burdman offices on Fifth Avenue. This added security would not have spared Wynn or Mrs. Houser, the van driver, from such untimely deaths.
The staff of the Burdman Group did not have the courtesy to contact Wynn's parents and did not acknowledge that he had reported for work that day.
As we have since learned, Staples had only been a client of the Burdman Group for approximately three weeks. Was any thought given to the safety of the van driver or the van passengers? Were any precautions taken to be sure that the clients did not have deadly weapons in their possession?
It has since been learned that the gun believed to have been used in the shooting, as well as another gun also found at his residence, had been in Staples' possession for at least a year. If this is the type of screening that the Burdman Group conducts on clients, then the public at large is at risk. Anyone using the facilities that he was hired to clean, could have been killed when Staples, as he stated, "just snapped."
My prayer is that the Burdman Group will reassess their clientele before exposing them to co-workers and the public. Wynn was a dearly loved young man who will be greatly missed by his family and friends.
Such a tragedy could and should have been avoided.
LILLIAN FROST
Youngstown