OK for Lake Milton winery stinks worse than dead fish

OK for Lake Milton winery
stinks worse than dead fish

EDITOR:

Imagine living in a very secluded, quiet neighborhood plotted and zoned residential on a single lane gravel road (the post office won’t home-deliver due to road conditions). Sounds great, but then one day your neighbor decides to plant a few grape plants and some berry bushes (barely enough for a few jars of jam at best) on a half-acre lot. This neighbor clears off the street right-of-way for a parking lot, installs some Christmas twinkle lights for public safety lighting, adds some wood chips for a public access walkway, continues to use a septic system designed for a one-bedroom house even though public sewers are available, and then lets nonresidents open a winery (bar) after being found guilty of “keeper of a place” for illegal sales of alcoholic beverages.

Then you hear that it’s OK and a “really nice place” from the prosecutor’s office with a court issue being dropped because their attorney must have done his “homework” since the property is considered agricultural? Shame on them not defending zoning, building and public safety issues.

We really hope the citizens of Milton Township wake up and see what’s happening. It could be your neighborhood next. Simple common sense tells you that this stinks worse than any dead fish in Lake Milton.

MARK B. BRETSCHNEIDER

RICHARD H. FENTON

BRIAN SLIDER

Berlin Center

For the sake of students,
consider consolidation

EDITOR:

I recently attended a Meet the Candidate Night in Weathersfield Township where I posed a question to the candidates running for the school board about the Regional Chamber’s idea to consolidate school districts. The candidates were all vehemently opposed to the idea.

I belong to the Libertarian Party, and we constantly wonder why all education isn’t privately done in a free-market economy; competition generally drives costs down and quality up.

That being said, I would still like to get the best value I can from my forced property and income tax that goes to the monopolist public schools. I see tremendous underemployment in small school districts and/or lack of educational opportunities for the student because there is not enough of them in a system to warrant a teacher for that subject.

To get more value for our educational tax dollars, consolidation should be strongly considered and not just talked about.

TIMOTHY McNEIL SR.

Mineral Ridge

Gazebo in center of Girard
won’t benefit city children

EDITOR:

As a person who spent many hours for many years working on the Girard Homecoming Committee, I find it very hard to accept the plans for the gazebo.

We were all under the impression that the money we were raising was for the kids of Girard. The goal was a youth center but there were never enough funds to make that happen.

After all these years the money is now going for a gazebo in the middle of town just a few feet from the busiest street in the city? Please tell me how this benefits our kids!

I know of no parent in their right mind who would let a child sit in the gazebo and smell gas fumes from the passing traffic. Just what is in it for the kids?

In the past, any request to use that money for anything to do with kids was met with resistance or a downright “NO” because it “did not benefit enough kids,” and now this?

I am serious here, someone please tell me what benefit this gazebo is going to be to the kids of Girard.

I understand that there is to be a plaque placed in the gazebo that lists all past Homecoming Committee chairmen. I am sorry to say but it looks more like an ego massage to me.

I am one person who donated a lot of time to the cause, and I am truly embarrassed by this slap in the face to the kids of Girard.

CONNIE HUGHES

Girard

Whites in Youngstown dealt
defeat to city school levy

EDITOR:

The last election cycle saw the 9.5- mill tax levy for the Youngstown schools go down in defeat again. The votes from the wards of the city clearly indicate again the citizen-taxpayers-voters in Ward 4 and Ward 7, our majority white European-American areas, have a problematic concern with this school system and administration.

My concerns are the Youngstown schools are about 65 percent black and Hispanic and 22 percent of our children are “special need” youngsters that other school systems find no room at the inn to accommodate.

The school system is run by a strong, vocal, compassionate African-American female, with African-Americans in key administrative positions for the first time in over 40 years of this “apartheid-like” Euro-centric environment.

Recently Bishop George Murry, newly appointed leader of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, took up the subject of racism. As reported in The Vindicator on Nov. 21, Bishop Murry stated, among other things, that “Racism is depicting one race as defective to another and seeing another as superior,”

“Racism may be evident in societal situations, institutional settings, and culturally,” he said. To paraphrase the bishop who spoke, institutional racism equates to blacks and Hispanics not getting promotions, cultural racism equates to European-Americans being the norm by which other cultures are judged. My utmost respect to Bishop Murry and Linda M. Linonis, the religion editor.

Those of us in the community who have toiled and carried this racism cross to get this delicate, but profound and necessary message to our white European-American citizen-taxpayer-voters; pray that the good shepherd. Bishop Murry, can selectively attach or influence an iota of energy to the inert dialogue given this one subject of substance, while he’s here. Because European-American neighbors don’t realize the full negative impact of their racial insensitivity, lack of diversity and overt racism upon our city, our neighborhoods, and our children’s future.

My European-American citizen-taxpayer-voter neighbors took their racist attitudes to the voting booths on Nov. 6, 2007. Next time, leave home without them.

CLARENCE BOLES

Youngstown