Effective regional plan for Valley requires cuts

Effective regional plan for Valley requires cuts

EDITOR:

I would like to recognize the excellent comment made in The Vindicator’s editorial of Aug. 28. Your editors see the situation better than the politicians who are running the various local governments.

The importance of regional governments is to make things simpler and then to run in a smooth fashion. Regional governments are not to be new battlegrounds for the existing feudal political lords to fight over. Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams should not fall back on an existing employment ruling in trying to force his will on Wal-Mart. If it’s a bad ruling, it should not be followed. The goal of both Liberty Township and Youngstown should be to attract Wal-Mart to the Mahoning Valley.

Youngstown should also make its water resources available to anyone in the suburbs who is willing to pay a reasonable price for the water. The suburbs need the water, and Youngstown needs the customer and the revenue. A fair price should be agreed upon that allows Youngstown to make some profit in the transaction. Water delivery is not a right that people of the suburbs should expect. But Youngstown should not hold up the water delivery as a ransom, asking the suburbs to accept the city’s ridiculous taxes. It should be a business deal where all can benefit.

The biggest impediment to a truly beneficial regional government system is the existing political systems. It is these people that we are expecting to adopt the regional government, and these are the people that are the least likely to enact it. One of the big savings that regional government could supply is a reduced number of elected officials and managers providing the same services that we presently have. This means that there would be fewer paychecks to government officials and fewer taxes on the citizens that supply the paychecks.

Our elected officials do not want this to happen. First, there are fewer of them on the payroll, and secondly, there are fewer political appointments that can be used as rewards for being elected.

It would take politicians of an unselfish nature, truly interested in making the Mahoning Valley a better place to live, to bring about such changes. I have not seen any such people in our governments recently.

DONALD BUTLER

Warren

Palin’s family is off limits

EDITOR:

Shame on The Vindicator for printing the cartoon in your Sept. 4 issue showing the stork superimposed on the American flag. I am outraged.

There is nothing amusing or humorous about that cartoon and I am horrified that The Vindicator is not abiding by the plea of both Democrats and Republicans that the issue of Palin’s family is off limits. What were you thinking? I am at a loss to even determine the implication intended in the cartoon. Certainly it had no political value.

Shame, shame on the cartoonist and on The Vindicator.

BARBARA L. SNIDER

Canfield