Excuses don't make the grade

Imagine you had a child who took a test that was scored by two teachers, one of whom gave it a low F and one a high F. Would you accept the child’s complaint that the grade was suspect be- cause the teachers were so far apart?

That’s what the public was asked to do re- cently after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that it wouldn’t be funding a $32.4 million nine-community pro- posal from the Valley from the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

One HUD official gave the consortium’s appli- cation 111 and the other 77 out of 150 possible points, which William D’Avignon, Youngstown’s community development director, said showed the process was too subjective. A passing grade was 115, so the application failed by any count.

Oh, it’s so unfair

Or imagine your child’s defense was that the test was unfair because the other kids are so much smarter than he is, and the teacher likes them better. That’s pretty close to U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan’s complaint that “HUD discriminates against smaller cities” because smaller cities don’t have the resources that big cities do to polish their ap- plications. Perhaps. Or perhaps the people putting together proposals for the big cities rely less on daughters of girlfriends to do proofreading.

Or imagine your kid convinced you that the test was flawed and the teacher was unfair and you steamed into the principal’s office, loaded for bear, only to be shown that your kid hadn’t com- pleted key parts of the test.

That’s pretty close to what happened to a Mahoning Valley delegation that went to Washington demanding an explanation for what they had been describing as an outrageous deni- al of the grant.

Enough, already. The Mahoning Valley can’t afford the pity parties. Communities here have had plenty of time to learn how to apply for grants. Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams has even bragged about past successes.

Youngstown — a city that has received national attention for its efforts to downsize — somehow neglected to demonstrate on the application that the city has experience in demolishing substan- dard buildings. Maybe the dog ate that part.

Or maybe everyone involved should learn that they have to do the work and do it right the first time. Or face the real world equivalent of expulsion.