A Good Morning for Warren?

By Ed Runyan

The mayor said he has worked hard to encourage legislators to provide stimulus money for firefighters.

WARREN — Warren Mayor Michael O’Brien and Tony Paglia, a vice president of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, are from the same generation: They came of age in the early 1970s, when economic times were good here.

But for their generation, times have never been quite as bad for the city as they are now, they said Friday during the chamber’s annual Good Morning Warren breakfast.

Both men cited the city’s loss of jobs and income-tax revenue over the past year, resulting in a 20 percent drop in the money available to provide city services.

“I believe these are the worst economic times that this generation has ever faced,” O’Brien said.

And Paglia forwarded the theory that perhaps no other U.S. city has suffered more job loss in the past year or two than Warren, with the triple whammy of lost income-tax revenue from scale-backs at Delphi Packard, General Motors and other manufacturing facilities.

But Paglia said he feels a “good vibration” coming from the steps O’Brien and his administration have taken in recent months to streamline the city’s operations.

“By necessity, he’s streamlining, which will be good for the city,” Paglia said at Enzo’s restaurant on Elm Road. “He’s taken the hard steps, and I think in the long run, it will pay off.”

The city laid off 20 police officers, 11 firefighters and eight other city employees effective Jan. 1 to trim $1.2 million from the 2009 budget. Auditor David Griffing has since estimated that the city may need to trim an additional $1.6 million over the next several months.

O’Brien highlighted several projects he hopes will lead the city into positive new areas: the comprehensive plan being completed this spring, the many millions in grant dollars being spent on road resurfacing projects, the bike trail to be built in the city this year and the Warren Business Incubator that so far has received $500,000 in federal funding.

If Warren can mimic some of the success Youngstown has had with its business incubator, it could “breathe life into the downtown” and “change the whole city,” said Paglia, the former senior regional editor at The Vindicator.

Some of the downtown successes in Youngstown have changed — in just a few years — the way the national media views the city, Pag- lia said.

While the city seeks stimulus money from Washington to help rebuild staffing levels in the police department, O’Brien said he has spent a great deal of time on the telephone with congressmen from Ohio and elsewhere trying to determine why there isn’t any stimulus money for firefighters.

“Somewhere the firefighter component was dropped off,” O’Brien said. Federal legislators have vowed to rectify that deficit, O’Brien added.

runyan@vindy.com