Sunday, July 31, 2011
Youngstown is the historic and cultural core of Mahoning County and will hold that title for years to come.
But I would offer that Youngstown is not the most important community on a day-to-day basis within Mahoning County right now.
That place is Boardman.
This is not to say “as Boardman goes, so goes Mahoning.” And it’s not to encourage a Peoria-like “How’s it bouncing in Boardman?”
But within the county, consider Boardman for the following measures:
Mahoning County government is dependent on sales tax revenues, and where do the bulk of those sales taxes come from?
Add up the number of people who work in the medical and nonprofit industries, and a large amount of them are in Boardman.
Combine its residential population with the daily working and shopping population, and you have the county’s biggest people center on most days of the year.
In previous decades, the number of manufacturing jobs was a true community measure. If you tally the Boardman manufacturing jobs — from Schwebel’s Bread on Midlothian Boulevard to Gia Russa sauces on McClurg Road — I would bet even that measure bodes well for Boardman compared with other county entities.
Protecting all of this? Well, it falls to Boardman’s 40,889 residents in a county of 238,823 residents.
No sales taxes (that all goes to the county); no income taxes; user fees for stores are nonsustainable; shares in state funds are dwindling.
That gets me to Tuesday’s controversial vote.
The nation’s economy is hardly on the road to recovery, and the public sentiment toward government spending — especially government spending on themselves — is, at best, guarded.
Yet, Boardman residents are being asked to vote to add $3.8 million in property taxes via a five-year levy.
I’ll stop short of calling it a “police levy” as the campaign calls it. It’s one of the problems I have with the levy.
With $2.4 million in current revenue subsequently coming out of police coffers (if the levy passes) and going to replace lost funding elsewhere, “for police” is rightly chided. Saying “$1.4 million for police and $2.4 million for elsewhere” is fair.
I also don’t like an August vote. It’s never passed the smell test and never will.
The rest of what I don’t like has little to do with Boardman and more to do with the position Boardman is in.
Boardman has evolved into a perilous predicament: It provides wealth and income for the region, as noted above, yet shares a border with one of the poorest ZIP codes in America.
And it is seemingly on its own to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. It was commerce disintegration in Youngstown that helped create Boardman decades ago. Where will it go after Boardman?
Boardman trustees are not shy about wanting security to come from more than taxing its residents.
They said they waited two months to meet personally with then-U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson about their plight. And when he stood them up, they vowed to make sure voters knew. And Wilson lost Boardman and his seat last year.
They’re not thrilled with state Rep. Ron Gerberry, whom they said has not stepped up enough in their plight to establish taxes or fees unique to a township their size that generates so much revenue for the county.
Gerberry, whose blood pressure is likely just coming down now from our chat, said he’s not one to blow smoke.
“I can tell them the truth, or I can tell them what they want to hear and then accomplish nothing,” he said.
He said any direction you go with a tax program gets attacked — counties will fight it, car dealers will fight it, retailers will fight it, arbitrators will spend it, etc.
Accurately measuring Boardman is difficult, which surprises me.
No one — from the state to Boardman to the county — can tell you definitively how much Boardman generates in annual sales taxes for the county. One official said more than 50 percent; township officials estimate more than 70 percent.
No one has ready stats on the historic prices of Boardman homes, and if there’s been a decline in sale prices in recent years.
This morning, almost 100 homes on Vindy.com are for sale in Boardman for less than $70,000. That’s a lot of low-priced inventory, said one Realtor. Canfield and Poland combined have 30. You say “affordable;” I say “cheap rental investment.”
And then there are the perceptions.
One Realtor said any property north of Shields Road is in trouble.
Another long-time resident, who lives in the last house in Youngstown before Boardman starts, sees a future where the housing within the Market-Glenwood-Midlothian-U.S. 224 square will be an extension of Youngstown’s South Side.
“Not in my lifetime; but yours for sure,” he said to me.
It’s ironic that within this same perimeter, another Realtor sees the answer.
The Glen neighborhood, as desired a place to live two generations ago as Fifth Avenue and the Youngstown Country Club area, is facing challenges. But active residents keep it from being overlooked, another Realtor said.
That activism is vital within all of Boardman, he said.
Boardman officials have been active in getting their house in order, with new health-care premiums for staff, frozen wages for police and fire and lower starting wages for those same departments, among other things.
A friend of mine asked, “So, with all you’ve learned, would you vote for it if you lived here?”
I don’t see any political leaders racing to protect Boardman despite Boardman’s significance in the Valley.
I don’t see Boardman’s plight getting easier in terms of property values, crime or even more obscure things such as homeowner’s insurance rates. Its population trended downward in the latest census.
I don’t see Youngstown getting more control over its plight, let alone helping its neighbor’s.
Still, I don’t want to pay more taxes.
But I think in this case, I’d have to.
Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes e-mails about stories and our newspaper. E-mail him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on vindy.com.