Trustees commend Austintown’s 9/11 Memorial Committee

By GRACE WYLER

gwyler@vindy.com

Austintown Trustee James Davis praised the 9/11 Memorial Park committee for its successful effort to bring back scrap metal from the former site of the World Trade Center at the Board of Trustees regular meeting on Monday night.

“On September 11, 2001 I drove people who had been rerouted from New York to the Youngstown airport back to New York City,” Davis said. “It gave me goosebumps to hear dead silence in the middle of Manhattan.”

The 9/11 Memorial committee brought back 12 steel beams that were once part of the World Trade Center buildings on Jan. 22. The beams will be used in a sculpture that will stand in Austintown’s 9/11 Memorial Park on Raccoon Rd.

Davis and other members of the Board of Trustees also commended the Austintown-Fitch wrestling organization on the 17th annual Josh Hephner Memorial tournament, which took place on Jan. 23-24. The tournament honors the former Austintown-Fitch wrestler who died in a car accident in 1993.

“Josh would have graduated with my class at Fitch,” Davis said. “He was a good friend to all of the students he went to school with.”

Davis also congratulated Joseph Marino, an English teacher at Austintown-Fitch, on his retirement after 35 years of teaching.

“He has a way to touch his students like no one else does,” Davis said.

In other business, the Board of Trustees approved a request from the Parks Department that allows the Parks Supervisor to apply for a Natureworks Grant from the state.

If the grant application is approved, the Parks Department will proceed with renovations of two tennis courts at Austintown Township Park.

The cost of the tennis court renovations will be around $38,000, according to Park Supervisor Joyce Grotton.

The Natureworks Grant will reimburse the city for 75 percent of the costs of the remodeling.

The Parks Department is currently renovating a basketball court at Austintown Township Park with funds from a Natureworks Grant approved last year.

The board also heard annual reports and inventory from the city’s police and fire departments, as well as several motions from the zoning department.