Valley overflowed with losses, discoveries in 2015

By DAVID SKOLNICK

skolnick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The Mahoning Valley is a lot of things, but 2015 showed that boring certainly isn’t one of them.

It was a year of losses: local control over the Youngstown school system, a shocking triple-fatal arson, the two-day disappearance of toddler Rainn Peterson and the resignation of the board of the St. Vincent de Paul Society after the temporary closing of its downtown dining hall.

It also was a year of discoveries: raw sewage in the rivers of Mill Creek MetroParks, the elusive Queen of Hearts, more government corruption and that Youngstown could make money and slow down traffic by issuing about 6,000 civil speeding citations.

Each of those made the top 10 news stories of 2015 as selected by the editors and staff of The Vindicator.

1 Combined sewer overflows from Youngstown after heavy rain in late June primarily caused a massive fish kill in Mill Creek Park’s Lake Newport.

Subsequent high E. coli sewage bacteria measurements in water samples taken at that lake by the Mahoning County District Board of Health led the Mill Creek administration to close lakes Newport, Cohasset and Glacier indefinitely to all recreational use July 10.

Questions were raised about what could be done to speed up a $147 million federally mandated Youngstown plan to control combined sewer overflow that’s to be finished by 2033. The issue remains unresolved.

The problem isn’t a new one. One hundred years ago, The Vindicator gave Volney Rogers, the founder of Mill Creek MetroParks, two full newspaper pages to lay out his staunch opposition to the construction of sewers through the park. What he wrote reads like a prophecy of what happened.

2 The state Legislature voted in July to give control over the long-failing Youngstown school district to a chief executive officer appointed by a five-member academic distress commission.

The law, referred to as the Youngstown Plan, came after a committee of local business, education and religious leaders met to recommend the law be changed. The committee was assisted by Richard Ross, the state superintendent of public instruction, who was criticized for failing to keep the state school board informed of the plan. Today is his last day on the job.

Among those on the local committee was Connie Hathorn, who resigned as superintendent of schools, effective June 30, after five years on the job in which he clashed with school board members over the direction of the district.

3 Corinne Gump, 10, and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt, died in a fire at the latter’s Youngstown home that law-enforcement officials say was purposely set March 30. It was the same day that Robert Seman, the boyfriend of Corinne’s mother, was to stand trial on charges he raped Corinne. He was on house arrest at the time of the fire.

A Mahoning County grand jury indicted Seman in June on 10 counts of aggravated murder, three counts of aggravated arson and three counts of aggravated burglary.

4 Political corruption continued to run rampant in the Mahoning Valley in 2015.

Democrat Ronald V. Gerberry, the most-senior member of the Ohio House and an elected official since 1973, resigned and pleaded guilty in August to unlawful compensation of a public official for hiding campaign money so he wouldn’t have to pay much to the Ohio House Democratic Caucus as obligated. He will cooperate with prosecutors in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption trial.

The Oakhill case – Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally, ex-county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats, and Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent county prosecutor candidate, are the defendants – progressed in 2015 toward a March 1, 2016, trial date. Both prosecutors and defendants submitted witness lists, and at least three attempts by defendants to have the case dismissed were rejected by the judge overseeing the case this year.

During an October hearing, Youngstown political consultant Harry Strabala was revealed to be the prosecutor’s main confidential witness who secretly recorded politicians for the FBI for several years.

Sciortino was indicted a second time in June, accused in a 25-felony-count indictment of using county-owned computers and other property for political purposes and for his private law practice and DJ business. He pleaded not guilty.

Affidavits unsealed in August in the Oakhill case contained explosive allegations that retired businessman Anthony Cafaro Sr. sought to have people donate money to candidate campaigns, and then would reimburse him.

The documents also disclosed that ex-county Probate Court Judge Mark Belinky, a Democrat, had “admitted to stealing money from people that he was a guardian over and further has admitted to altering probate court documents to further such theft and has further admitted to using a Mahoning County probate computer to create false probate court records,” according to two affidavits. His admissions are the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Belinky pleaded guilty in May 2014 to a felony count of tampering with records.

Earlier this month, a special prosecutor was appointed to investigate “alleged illegal activity in the city of Niles, Ohio, involving government officials and others,” according to court records.

5 The increased use of heroin and opioids nationwide hit the Mahoning Valley hard.

The number of Valley and Ohio residents dying from unintentional drug overdoses continues to increase – a trend that started in 2007.

In 2014, the latest year reported by the Ohio Department of Health, 2,482 Ohioans died of unintentional overdoses, the highest number ever and a 17.6 percent increase compared with 2013. In Mahoning County, 51 people died of unintentional overdoses, and 53 died in Trumbull County in 2014.

As of Wednesday, the number of unintentional drug overdoses in Mahoning County was 66 for 2015.

As of mid-October, the number of unintentional overdoses in Trumbull also was 66 this year.

Overdose deaths now surpass vehicle accidents as the No. 1 cause of all accidental deaths in the nation.

6 The Youngstown Police Department started using speed cameras to target those in school zones and on highways starting Aug. 18.

The program is expected to exceed 6,000 civil speeding citations this year.

The initial program drew criticism with officers issuing about 550 motorists weekly, dropping to about 175 a week during the last two months.

Fees ranged from $100 to $150, depending on the speed, with the city getting 65 percent and Optotraffic, the Maryland company that provided the cameras and processes and mails the citations, keeping 35 percent.

City officials said the goal of the effort was to reduce speeding, and that it’s been a success.

7 During the final days of Sciortino’s time as Mahoning County auditor in late February, he handed out $50,000 worth of raises and bonuses to his staff. This was discovered by then-incoming Auditor Ralph T. Meacham, a Republican, when he got into office.

On the second day of his job, Meacham fired Carol McFall, chief deputy officer, for failing to disclose the bonuses Sciortino gave to 13 employees after The Vindicator made a public-records request for compensation increases at the auditor’s office.

Sciortino’s indictment in June accuses him and three of his employees at his direction of illegally using government-owned computers and software more than 300 times to raise money for political purposes to keep him in office and for his private law firm and DJ business.

8 The Queen of Hearts game at Barry Dyngles, a restaurant/bar on South Raccoon Road in Austintown, attracted thousands of people for several weeks, each seeking to win the prize that finally grew to $1.8 million. Molly Blair of Warren won the prize at an Oct. 4 drawing.

Ticket sales were brisk during the final weeks with Barry Dyngles selling about 100,000 tickets a day.

The event became so popular that police had to close down the portion of Raccoon near the restaurant/bar for each drawing.

The game drew the attention of state officials but was never ruled illegal.

9 During the week of Nov. 30, St. Vincent de Paul Society closed its downtown Youngstown dining hall, a main source of lunch for the working poor and the homeless, because of personnel issues.

Shortly after the closure, Brian Antal, the Mahoning County society president, was criticized by volunteers and others for his leadership and for new policies they didn’t believe supported St. Vincent’s mission.

The kitchen reopened Dec. 7 with Antal and three other members of the county St. Vincent board resigning afterward. Those resignations are effective today.

The Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley recently announced it had received a $750,000 donation from an anonymous donor to build a new feeding site that will open in the second quarter of 2016 with former St. Vincent kitchen manager Ralph “Skip” Barone running it.

10 Two-year-old Rainn Peterson walked away from the North Bloomfield home of her great-grandparents in October and was missing for two days.

An organized search failed to find her, but Victor Sutton, also of North Bloomfield, found the girl wet and dehydrated, but safe and asleep in a field.

There were plenty of other stories that were considered for the top 10, including:

Someone painted pro-ISIS messages on The Rock outside Youngstown State University’s Kilcawley Center in November. Students repainted The Rock with the American flag and patriotic messages.

A 22-year-old man called Austintown police in October to complain he was “too high” and couldn’t feel his hands after smoking marijuana.

Youngstown saw an increase in the number of homicides this year with 22, including 6 in November. There were 19 recorded homicides in 2014.

Struthers Mayor Terry Stocker was successfully elected to a third four-year term as a write-in candidate. On election night, it was determined Democrat Danny Thomas Jr. had won the election. After Stocker pointed out inconsistencies in the vote count, the Mahoning County Board of Elections discovered 147 uncounted write-in ballots in a locked room. When those votes were counted, Stocker emerged as the winner.

Sebastian Rucci named his hotel in Austintown “Hotel California,” after the Eagles song, but was sued in federal court over a trademark violation. He changed the name of the establishment to California Palms, Hotel and Suites instead of appealing the decision. After initially getting rejected for a liquor license, one was granted in November.