Hope is a budget casualty

Hope is a budget casualty

EDITOR:

Hope House Visitation Center Inc., a program whose contract has recently been terminated by Mahoning County Job & Family Services, knows the impact that the of loss of funding and current economic conditions in the Mahoning Valley have on the families and especially the children they serve.

Hope House is a charitable, not-for-profit facility built by the Junior League of Youngstown and the community to provide supervised visitation and the safe exchange of children between parents where families are going through the intense issues surrounding divorce and custody battles. We receive referrals from Domestic Relations Court, Juvenile Court, and Children Services Board. At Hope House families receive visitation services in a safe, neutral, homelike, child friendly environment. Children need and want safe access to both parents.

Many children with parents having mental health, substance abuse, domestic/family violence, and poverty issues are going to lose contact with a parent or both parents, their siblings, and other family members via safe supervised visitation and exchange services. Victims are going to suffer further fear, abuse, and stalking. When the economy sinks, violence increases, putting children at risk of violence or witnessing violence.

Last year Hope House served 79 families with weekly, safe, neutral supervised visitation and exchange services — 91 percent having domestic/family violence issues and over half living in poverty. The numbers have doubled this year. With the funding from JFS we were able to drop our fees and saw a 300 percent increase in referrals from the courts. With parents losing jobs and benefits, most of our families cannot afford to pay the minimal fees we will now have to charge them.

We are cutting our expenses, and joined with the Mahoning County Commissioners to apply for federal funding. Hope House has only two full-employees, two part-time monitors and a part-time deputy sheriff. Hope House partners with Youngstown State University to train associate and bachelor degree interns in the Departments of Social Work and Human Ecology. We also partner with The Big Reach Center of Hope in Greenford for our Rural Visitation Program serving the rural areas of Mahoning County. Hope House is a model visitation center in the State of Ohio and even nationally. It is handicap accessible, built by the community, and mortgage and rent free.

In the March 7 Vindicator, there was a story about the murder-suicide of 6 family members in Cleveland. Is this the next negative incident to happen in the Mahoning Valley?

CAROLE J. BOPP, executive director

Hope House Visitation Center

Youngstown

Expand area transportation

EDITOR:

I recently read about the allocation of transportation monies to the various transportation providers in the region. While I am always happy to see money coming into the Mahoning Valley, I am sadly disappointed by the lack of vision regarding a regional approach to the transportation concerns in the area. It is very difficult to continue to see each county scrambling and competing for dollars that will fatten each county’s coffer but will never provide the infrastructure needed to address the transportation issues in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.

The severity of this current economy will present us with new and significant transportation challenges. The reality of the situation is that many who have lost good paying jobs and have car payments may soon find that they will be unable to continue to pay their monthly premiums and will face repossession of their cars. Once people do not have transportation, options for assistance and future employment decrease dramatically. People in Mahoning County can travel throughout Mahoning County for jobs but are not able to access affordable transportation to the Niles/Warren area in Trumbull County to look for jobs. People in Trumbull County are at an even greater disadvantage. The only option that the general public (those who are not senior citizens or disabled) has is to pay $4 per one way trip wherever they want to travel in Trumbull County.

On April 1, 2007 WRTA stopped the Warren Express Bus route that traveled from the WRTA terminal on Route 422 into Niles and Warren and out to Kent State Extension. At the time the service ended the route had the third highest ridership of any of WRTA’s routes. People who had jobs along the bus route lost those jobs and major employers lost good employees who were unable to get to the job sites. When the economy begins to turn around and jobs become available in the Mahoning Valley I fear that we will not have a transportation infrastructure in place to enable people to access as many job options as they can. This includes jobs that might be available in Trumbull and Mahoning Counties in Ohio and Mercer and Lawrence Counties in Pennsylvania.

I fear that community leaders and political leaders lack the political will to address the issue of regional transportation. I would like to urge those individuals and political leaders who operate WRTA, Niles Transport System and Eastgate and are concerned about transportation in their respective communities to get their heads out of the sand and look seriously at addressing the issues identified in the Regional Transportation Study conducted in 2007 and begin to implement the recommendations made in that study.

Sister JEAN ORSUTO

Mineral Ridge

Rural areas shortchanged

EDITOR:

I am a resident of Berlin Township. Obviously, I pay local and county taxes, state taxes and federal taxes. In the course of my life my wife and I have paid literally hundreds of thousands dollars in taxes. Suffice it to say that my family and I would be in a far better economic situation if less money had been taken away from us by taxation.

In Berlin, we do not have a paid professional fire department. I am one of the many volunteer firefighter/EMTs who answer the emergency calls in our community, and I am happy to do it. I did notice, however, that recently Youngstown received a federal grant of the money taken away from us to hire firefighters for their community.

I also noticed in The Vindicator recently that Youngstown is receiving another $3.51 million grant from the federal porkulus bill (again, money taken away from us by the federal government) to boost the WRTA bus system. It occurs to me, however, that I haven’t seen a WRTA bus in Berlin lately.

Mayor Jay Williams, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and Charlie Wilson, and Sen. Sherrod Brown need to explain to me why I should feel good about this.

JERRY A. GRAF

Berlin Center

Buy now and save

EDITOR:

The best-kept secret of the year has to be told. The 2009 tax credit almost sounds too good to be true for those who have studied the Stimulus to Housing recently enacted by Congress.

The $8,000 tax credit is a true credit on your taxes. The first time home buyer (defined as someone who has not owned a principal residence for three years) who pays $80,000 or more for their residence receives an $8,000 tax credit. Should the total tax liability be only $5,000, they receive that amount as a tax credit when they file their ’09 return (or amended ’08) and they also receive the difference of $3,000 in the form of a “refundable” credit from the IRS.

This program expires Dec. 1, and with the time it takes to close (sometimes up to 90 days) any cautious buyer should be under contract no later than early September to be safe.

There are some income restrictions ($75,000 for individuals or $150,000 for married couples filing jointly), and the new home buyers must remain in the home for no less than three years.

JOHN BURGAN

Boardman