The question about razing: Who's first?

The politics of demolition leave nobody happy.
& lt;a href=mailto:rgsmith@vindy.com & gt;By ROGER SMITH & lt;/a & gt;
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Lewis Ramos considers Youngstown State University a jewel, but he sees grime around the edges.
Ramos, of Canfield, and his family are big YSU supporters. So are many of his friends and relatives.
When they come to the campus downtown, they all see the surrounding blight. Ramos points to the run-down neighborhood barely more than a football's throw across Fifth Avenue from Stambaugh Stadium. Several homes there have been condemned and are on the city's list of homes to be demolished.
He said he doesn't understand why the city hasn't torn them down.
"It's ridiculous," he said. "I'm voicing the concerns of thousands of people."
Artis Gillam Sr., D-1st, says he voices the concerns of thousands of people, too, but not the same people. His people are residents who live across the city. They have eyesores on their streets that they want torn down immediately.
"[Those residents' concerns] should take priority," said Gillam, one of several vociferous advocates on council for residential demolition.
Welcome to the politics of demolition.
In the thick of it
In the middle is Mike Damiano, the city's housing and demolition director.
The responsibility -- and pressure -- has fallen to him to somehow balance the competing interests.
He tries to make everybody happy. Council members constantly are on his case. So are the nonprofit agencies, churches and other groups trying to revitalize their surrounding areas.
Inevitably, Damiano leaves nobody happy.
The pressure is intense. He lies awake in bed thinking about ways to manage the problem, he said. Individuals and neighborhood groups approach him all the time, wherever he goes, asking that the city take care of them.
YSU is the largest example of a redeveloping area where people want the look of the surroundings to improve, but it's hardly the only one, Damiano said.
"You get a lot of pressure from a lot of little groups. There are a lot in this town," he said. "They'd like me to take them all down. But [the city] can't afford it."
Instead, Damiano handles council members and institutions the same way.
"I try to tell them I can't take them all down but give me your worst ones," he said.
Issue is cost
Money, of course, is the pivotal issue.
Lots of money would let the city knock down individual problem properties and eliminate a bulk of eyesores in certain spots where revitalization is happening.
So far this year, however, city leaders have provided about $175,000 for demolition. That's enough to raze fewer than 100 houses. The demolition list, meanwhile, exceeded 600 houses this month.
Lewis Ramos doesn't think the city can afford to merely pacify those redeveloping Youngstown. The city will have even less of an economic base in the future if blight lingers around redeveloping areas, he said.
"Are we going to let this go for the next four, five years?" he asked.
Issue of fairness
Gillam says he wants to help those trying to improve the city.
But the solution isn't pulling city services from other neighborhoods, he said. Residents elected their council member and they expect action, he said. It's only right that the city serve those people first, he said.
"Fairness is fairness," Gillam said. "It's not fair to the other six councilmen who need [demolition], too."
Jay Williams, director of the city's Community Development Agency, says there is a long-standing plan for demolition spending focused on redevelopment.
He admits, however, that the city rarely follows the plan and instead focuses on residential demolition.
"We tend to get into reactionary issues of the day," he said.
The Youngstown 2010 process of creating a comprehensive city plan aims to overcome such politics, Williams said.
A main tenet of Youngstown 2010 is making hard decisions that ultimately benefit the entire city. The broad-based, grass-roots plan is to spell out for city leaders what residents truly want.
The 2010 plan should diminish politics in demolition by forcing city leaders to do what a majority of citywide residents want, he said.
Now, council members set the priorities, which easily become political, he said.
& lt;a href=mailto:rgsmith@vindy.com & gt;rgsmith@vindy.com & lt;/a & gt;