HIGH-TECH TOWN HALL

By SEAN BARRON

news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

During typical town-hall meetings, attendees have perhaps three minutes to express their opinions and feelings, but at one such session, a high-tech approach made that possible with a simple push of a button.

“We figured that a lot of good questions will be asked of each of them,” Chris Travers, 7th Ward Citizens Coalition president, said about the five-member panel that addressed a variety of issues and concerns on attendees’ minds during the organization’s meeting Thursday.

Panelists were state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd; Youngstown Health Commissioner Erin Bishop; Mayor John A. McNally; police Chief Robin Lees; and T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s economic-development and planning director.

During the hour-long session at Faith Community Covenant Church, 1919 E. Midlothian Blvd., on the South Side, the five answered 19 questions that those in attendance had written on slips of paper. Then audience members hit one of five buttons on their instant-polling keypads to rank and express their feelings about the panelists’ responses.

Supplying the devices was Turning Technologies LLC of Youngstown.

The rankings were strongly agree, acceptable, neutral, disagree or doubt, and strongly disagree or doubt.

“It was a huge blow to the city in terms of efforts and resources to bring them here,” Woodberry said in response to a question pertaining to the closing of the area’s three Bottom Dollar supermarkets about a year ago.

Woodberry added that efforts continue to look at proposals for the now vacant buildings, as do talks with the city regarding the communities’ needs and for Youngstown to have control over the Glenwood Avenue location on the South Side. The results to her answer were 90 percent positive, while 10 percent disagreed.

Attendees’ responses were more widespread – 55 percent positive, 25 percent negative and 20 percent neutral – to Schiavoni’s answer to a question about the controversial Youngstown Plan for the city schools and his proposals to make certain modifications to it.

Schiavoni has called for built-in safeguards that would limit the appointed chief executive officer’s power and add more community input. He also said he was happy that all five of the newly appointed Academic Distress Commission members are from the city.

Thirty percent of the audience strongly agreed and 20 percent strongly disagreed with Bishop’s response to the possibility of consolidating the city and county health departments. Bishop expressed concern that doing so likely would reduce residents’ ability to have their voices heard and that not everyone would be as well served.

Bishop also discussed correlations between poverty and health, and addressed Mahoning County’s high infant-mortality rate.

Seventy percent of respondents strongly agreed with Lees’ assessment of the Youngstown Police Department in which he pointed to the community-policing program that got underway earlier this year and has one officer assigned to each of the city’s seven wards to work more closely with residents. The chief also mentioned the partnership with the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence and pointed to what he sees as a top-notch screening process for new hires.

“It takes us literally months to hire officers,” Lees said, adding that he wanted to encourage those with complaints to address him directly.

The chief also discussed the complexities of having officers wear body cameras, especially the cost and privacy concerns. The department is “moving cautiously,” he said.

McNally received a mainly positive response when he talked about plans to develop riverfront property near downtown, including near the Market Street Bridge and the Covelli Centre. The city is working with a Columbus company on that effort, the mayor said, adding that he hopes to begin public discussions on the matter this winter.

Other questions focused on the possibility of having a form of city government similar to Cuyahoga County’s 11-member council (which replaced its former three-commissioner panel in 2011), what types of additional businesses should locate in downtown Youngstown and how most people from other parts of Ohio view the city after they visit.

Travers said he hopes the Citizen’s Coalition’s website will be relaunched early next year. After that, it’s likely that information collected from Thursday’s meeting will be placed on it, he added.