SEPTEMBER

SEPTEMBER
1. Country music star Vince Gill gives a 30-minute, nine-song mostly solo acoustic performance in the grandstand on a rainy night to close the Canfield Fair because it wasn't safe to have a backup band using large amounts of electricity under those conditions.
3. Judge Robert Lisotto, 57, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, a Canfield resident, pleads innocent to a drunken driving charge after being cited by Canfield police.
* Ethel Wilbert-Bethea, 40, of Cortland, pleads innocent to a child-endangering charge in the death of Auntavia Atkins, 3, who had been in her care. After having been removed in serious condition from Bethea's home Friday, the girl died Tuesday of a head injury in Cleveland Metro Health Center.
8. Youngstown police record only one homicide between June 28 and today, compared to 10 in the same period last year, and attribute the decline to collaborative law enforcement efforts by federal, state and local authorities.
9. The Mahoning County commissioners and Children Services Board approve financial arrangements for a new four-story, $7.5 million building to house CSB and the Ohio Bureau of Worker's Compensation. The building is to be built next to the George V. Voinovich Government Center in downtown Youngstown.
10. Gov. Bob Taft visits Paul C. Bunn Elementary School in Boardman to promote his volunteer OhioReads program.
11. The Stiles Super Market, a 24-hour convenience store at McGuffey Road and Stiles Avenue in Youngstown, which police said was a hub of illegal late-night drug and firearms activity, is padlocked as a public nuisance under a court order the city sought.
16. City leaders, with the Youngstown 2010 project in the works, are looking to learn from Akron's recovery process. Jay Williams, director of the city's Community Development Agency, said he was struck by the similarities in the two areas.
17. WCI Steel can survive bankruptcy, but it will likely be under new ownership, analysts say. A New York analyst says other companies will be more interested in buying the company because it filed for bankruptcy protection.
* A judge sentenced Mary Ann Barnett to four years in prison in the death of her grandson. The child found his grandmother's stash of OxyContin and swallowed some.
18. Engineers estimate a 5,400-seat downtown Youngstown arena will cost just short of $30 million. The costs do not include items such as building permits and demolition.
* More than 90 percent of the ninth- and 10th-grade students in the Diocese of Youngstown Catholic Schools passed state proficiency tests in 2002-03. Across the diocese, 100 percent of 10th-graders passed the writing test.
19. Trumbull County commissioners vote 2-1 to place Tony Delmont, county maintenance director, on unpaid administrative leave in the county's janitorial supply purchasing investigation. The commissioners' decision follows a guilty plea by Barry Jacobson, a Bedford Heights businessman, who admitted paying thousands of dollars in bribes to Delmont.
* The Three by the River restaurant complex in downtown Sharon will be reduced to two when the Hot Rod Cafe closes by Oct. 7 due to insufficient business.
* Buckeye Transfer of Youngstown will breathe new life into the former National Refractories and Minerals plant in Columbiana by using the building as a warehouse and headquarters.
23. The Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport is turned down for a $1 million FAA grant to help struggling airports lure passenger service.
* Ground is broken for the new $12.8 million West Elementary School at Schenley Park in Youngstown.
24. The amount of research funding from outside sources grows 35 percent at YSU from about $4.4 million last year to about $5.9 million this year. That amount has grown eight-fold since 1994-95.
* The future of the Lear Corp. Lordstown plant is up in the air after the company lost a contract to supply seats for the nearby GM car assembly plant.
25. An Ohio Supreme Court ruling requiring the Mahoning County commissioners to come up with an additional $2.5 million for the county juvenile and probate courts will devastate the county's general fund this year and next, commissioners say.
26. Tony Delmont, suspended Trumbull County maintenance director, pleads innocent to money laundering, theft in office and five counts of bribery after being secretly indicted by the county grand jury. His wife, Karen, pleads innocent to money laundering. Prosecutors contend Mrs. Delmont helped her husband launder $17,000 in bribes from Envirochemical -- a Bedford Heights janitorial supply vendor.
27. The Free Polish Krakusy Society in Youngstown celebrates its centennial with its finances stabilized by an influx of new, younger officers who have pushed to boost membership and hall rentals.
28. Steelworkers at Wheatland Tube Co. vote 261-150 to return to work, ending their five-month strike against the company. About 100 of the 470 strikers will be laid off for the next three to six months because of a slowdown in the pipe and tube industry.
29. The Canadian-based Intier Automotive Co., which outbid Lear Seating to supply seats to the GM Lordstown plant, intends to build a plant in Vienna to serve GM.
30. The Ohio Department of Development awards Youngstown $500,000 toward construction of a $2.1 million bridge from Division Street to the Ohio Works Industrial Park.