Betras, Gains, de Souza should quit their whining

Betras, Gains, de Souza should quit their whining

In regards to the Oakhill Renaissance Place corruption case trial in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Janet Burnside made her decision, and plea agreements were reached with prosecutors.

Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber President and CEO Thomas Humphries, the Rev. Richard Murphy, pastor of St. Mary Church in Mineral Ridge, and the citizens of Youngstown support Mayor John A. McNally.

Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman David Betras, county Prosecutor Paul Gains and Vindicator Columnist Bertram de Souza should quit their whining and move on. Carrying on a vendetta is certainly stressful on their person. What that brings on is a sore loser.

Jose Colon, Youngstown

Kasich acts like spoiled brat and should quit race

Canfield Council- man Joe LoCicero’s Vindicator letter lamenting the reduction of state funds for the cutbacks in Canfield’s city services is just what I talked about.

Gov. John Kasich’s obsession with a balanced budget and surpluses in the state treasury is hurting all residents of Ohio. His brag that he saved 80 percent of the cost of the state’s Job and Family Services Department by going electronic decimated the staff that was so helpful to the needy. Most of the staff were laid off, or placed elsewhere. You now have to file online, or go to the library for help. John Kasich is not good for Ohio and is not a good choice for president.

Other than Ohio, which he did not win by a huge margin, where did he win? He has not won one other state primary. He has trailed in most. He has no mathematical way of winning the GOP nomination and does not have a snowball’s chance of being chosen.

He is preventing a clear choice between the two front-runners. A GOP contested convention in Cleveland will do unnecessary harm to the Republican Party. Kasich is acting like a spoiled brat. Other contestants better than him have gotten out of the way, and so should he.

Tom Page, Boardman

Plans for hunting preserve resemble slaughterhouse

This letter is in refer- ence to Candywood Golf Course using its property as an animal slaughterhouse. With total disregard to the neighbors and community, the owners went under the radar to secure everything needed, and before anyone knew, it was a done deal.

This was not done on a whim; there had to be planning and research done. Too bad you didn’t put the same effort into keeping this property a golf course, your family’s legacy.

When you have hunters saying this is inhumane and wrong, that says a lot. A responsible hunter would not partake in such a hunt.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources says it is not responsible for the animals being healthy. Healthy to go get slaughtered.

What kind of people breed these animals, turn a property into an animal slaughterhouse? Greedy people wanting to make fast money.

There is a special place for everyone involved in this horrendous decision, and it is not heaven!

Patty Townsend, Girard

Mahoning County keeps digging itself into hole

Regarding the 3-per- cent drop in population in the Mahoning Valley over the past few years: Yes, some have left the area, but I believe a majority headed right to our graveyards based on the amount of obituaries in the paper over the past few years.

This is population that will never be moving back. With that being said, I bring up a letter that I wrote 11 years ago about the purchase of the Oakhill property and the cost it would take on this community because we were losing population at that time also.

I said, “If the hospital could not afford to keep that building, how could we as taxpayers?” I didn’t want that building to become an “albatross around the necks of the taxpayers of the Mahoning County.”

Yet, here we are 11 years later with a half-full building in an area of the county that no one wishes to go to. All of the hidden problems are surfacing, such as vermin, flooding, smells of dead bodies permeating the air system throughout the place.

The costs continue to mount when we have several places that are open and usable for the types of services offered there. We have two vacant Bottom Dollar buildings. We have a Sparkle on Mahoning Avenue and one on Market Street in Boardman, each of which has ample parking that would work great for veterans services or the board of elections. There would be easier access for walking patrons, a one-floor plan, wheelchair access, and they’d be a lot cheaper to maintain in comparison to that whole hospital complex.

My next issue is spending $3.4 million on a dog pound, when we have all these empty buildings. Our tax monies are running thinner, and we are going to give this much money to the dogs when our people are working in that Oakhill building breathing dead bodies? What’s wrong with this picture? That no one is looking at other options that are cheaper and will work just as well bothers me.

The reason the commissioners back then said they needed to keep Oakhill was that it would cost about $8 million to move the morgue and yet when the dead bodies issue recently came out, they talked about moving the morgue. Now it would cost only $3 to $4 million to move it. How does the price change that drastically in 10 years? Either they lied about the cost of moving that morgue in the first place to force the county to buy that building knowing we needed a morgue, or someone has found one heck of a sweet deal for a new morgue 10 years later at half-price.

I have a strange feeling that Oakhill is going to boomerang right back on us. With the population continuing to drop, that old saying rings ever true: “When you’re in a hole, stop digging!”

Lisa Beth Moore, Youngstown