Home rule would give trustees power to do good

Home rule would give trustees power to do good

EDITOR:

To anyone with a passing familiarity with Liberty Township, it is evident that quality of life here has declined in the past 10-15 years. While trustees are experiencing some success in bringing life back to the township’s commercial backbone, residents have been frustrated at their inability to combat the blight that is eating away at neighborhoods once considered safe and family-friendly.  

Liberty residents can regain control over the situation with one finger – by voting for Limited Home Rule in the elections on November 6. Limited Home Rule will give the Township far more powerful tools for enforcing zoning codes; regulating parking and noise control; and dealing with nuisances like overgrown lawns, vicious dogs, abandoned junk vehicles, and houses and other buildings permitted by their owners to fall into disrepair. 

Under Limited Home Rule, when the Zoning Inspector finds the property owner is not in compliance after being notified, he can issue a citation. Unlike today, there will be no long, laborious process to get the problem resolved; the offender receives a ticket and is fined in a similar manner to a speeding ticket. A series of escalating civil fines can be imposed, and the violator has 14 days to pay or make the required improvements. Violators can fight the citation, if they wish to go to court to do so, but the point is, Limited Home Rule will motivate the property owner to fix the problem rather than continue to face increasing fines for not doing so.

Thus at minimal or no cost, Limited Home Rule will provide Liberty Township with a powerful new tool with which Trustees and residents together can determine the future direction of their community.

If you want to see the benefits of Limited Home Rule, you only have to look as far as Boardman or Howland, both of which enacted home rule in recent years and today boast many of the Mahoning Valley’s most attractive, desirable neighborhoods.  

I urge Liberty residents to use the power of their index finger to vote “Yes” on November 6 in favor of limited home rule. 

DEBRA DULBERGER

Liberty Township

Demand more cuts; vote no

EDITOR:

As a Youngstown resident, taxpayer and voter, I believe like every household and business in the city of Youngstown during these hard and struggling times in having to make cuts and sticking to a strict and balanced budget in order to survive another day, another week, another month or another year.

That same measuring stick and standard should be demanded of the Youngstown City School District, the Youngstown school board, Superintendent Dr. Wendy Webb and her administration and the Youngstown Education Association as it relates to the 9.5 mill tax levy on the ballot, which many Youngstown taxpayers now cannot afford.

There are closings, downsizing, wage cuts, and buyouts taking place in the city and across the Mahoning Valley at businesses large and small, such as Delphi, General Motors, General Electric, Forum Health and many others.

I like many Youngstown residents, taxpayers, voters and stakeholders, who are against the 9.5 mill tax levy by the Youngstown City School District, truly believe the solution is not more money and taxes that the average Youngstowner now cannot afford. The school board, Dr. Webb and the YEA must begin to seriously fix the debt and balance the budget (by making the real tough decisions) within the district’s large bureaucracy. Just like every Youngstown taxpayer and business do daily to survive.

The answer to the short term and long term problems of the Youngstown school district not more taxes, but truly downsizing the large entrenched bureaucracy from top to bottom.

Vote NO on the 9.5 mill tax levy Nov. 6. The solution to fixing the district financially are all ready there within the entrenched bureaucracy — not in more taxes that the taxpayers and homeowners do not have.

WILLIE JAMES RICHARDS

Youngstown