Valley boasts bounty of celeb sound-alikes

By CAITLIN FITCH
TheNewsOutlet.org

People always ask Barbara Walters if she is going to interview them, but she’d rather work in her garden.

Pamela Anderson won’t pose for Playboy magazine, but she will make envelopes for churches.

When Steve Martin isn’t doing housework, he can be found on the golf course.

And Taylor Swift would rather work in a science lab than sing country-music songs.

These people have three things in common: They have the same name as celebrities, have a different lifestyle than their celebrity counterparts and all live in the Mahoning Valley.

They are not alone in the sharing of celebrity names.

A new reality show called “Same Name” debuted this year on CBS, and celebrities such as Reggie Bush, David Hasselhoff and Mike Tyson swapped places with strangers who share their same name.

And specifically to Martin, Walters, Swift and Anderson, according to howmanyofme.com, America has 958 Steve Martins, 1,837 Pamela Andersons and 592 Barbara Walters.

Taylor has just five other Taylor Swifts.

In the Mahoning Valley, there, too, are folks who can claim their own celebrity clones.

Pamela Anderson, the celebrity, is known for her role on “Baywatch,” her relationships with rockers Tommy Lee and Kid Rock, and her, um, curves.

The Valley’s Pamela Anderson lives in Hanoverton with her husband and two children.

“There is a big difference between me and the famous Pam Anderson: She has money. I don’t. She’s from Canada. I’m from America. She posed for Playboy. I definitely didn’t.

“The only thing that is similar between us is that we both have blond hair and two kids.”

Anderson is a lifetime resident of Hanoverton. She hasn’t done much traveling, but if she were to meet Anderson someday, she’d be ecstatic.

“I’d love to meet her. I just want to ask her how she got started, know about her life, her kids. I’d ask her what she does in her spare time and find out if we have any other similarities,” she said.

Sharing a name with a celebrity can come with disadvantages, besides general teasing.

“One time I was visiting someone in jail and wrote my name down on the visitors log,” Anderson said. “And they wouldn’t let me in. They thought I was joking and faking my name. It took a while to get them to believe me so I could go in.”

Swift, who attends Canfield High School, doesn’t even like country music. But he accepts the coincidence.

“Every time I meet someone new and tell them my name, they are always like, ‘Oh, my god! Just like the singer.’ It’s kind of funny,” he said.

Seventeen-year-old Swift spends his time on schoolwork, the public-forum debate team and focusing on his future. “My plans are to go to college for biomedical engineering, and possibly law to become a patent lawyer.”

In Brookfield, Barbara Walters, a divorcee with two sons and a green thumb, has been a gardener for 25 years. She gets teased about her name all the time.

“I get a lot of comments about my name; a lot of the time when someone sees my name, they joke about it and ask me if I’m going to interview them,” she said.

The jokes kept coming even at work.

“A few years ago, when I was working at the Radisson Hotel, the managers wanted to put a sign out in front of the hotel that said, ‘Come, stay at the Radisson, we’ve got Barbara Walters!’”

Walters, who occasionally watches “The View,” a daytime talk show featuring the celebrity Walters, would be honored to meet the famous Barbara.

“I would be very gracious, and consider it a privilege to meet her and could probably relate to her.”

There are virtually no similarities to be found with Steve Martin of Ellsworth — a retired Ohio Edison lineman, who claims to be a “house husband” and an avid golfer.

Celeb Martin could be considered a master of laughter. His career includes gigs as a stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is famous for being in such movies as “Father of the Bride,” “The Pink Panther” and “Bowfinger.”

“I liked Steve Martin – the writer. As a comedian, I don’t think he’s that funny, but I do like his movies.”

The two Martins differ in other ways.

“My wife still works, so I make sure the house is clean and do most of the cooking. I don’t think the famous Steve Martin does that,” said Martin. “I think Steve Martin is in his 60s [Note: He is 66]. I’m 56, and still have my youth.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Golfers, pilots, others find geese nuisance by The News Outlet

Imagine you’re at your favorite park. It’s a nice warm sunny day. You walk around enjoying the sights and sounds. Children playing on the swing-set, dogs running with their owners and geese flying overhead. (HONK< HONK< HONK) It’s a picturesque scene. And then you step in goose droppings.

Geese and their feces are a real pain these days. Golfers run the risk of balls landing in goo. You can’t walk in the parks or near a lake without watching your step. Beachgoers dodge droppings and mothers worry about their toddlers falling face first into feces. And even the casual shopper needs to be wary of where they step in parking lots.

Not only is it unsightly, but it can also be responsible for the spread of disease such as E. coli, cholera and botulism. Stephen Vantassel, coordinator of wildlife damage management at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, says it’s difficult to connect feces with disease outside of common sense.

IN: Certainly I think
OUT: to do that.
TRT: 11 seconds

(Certainly I think that if you stuck your finger in a dropping and then shoved it in your mouth, probably there would be connection because that’s unusual for people to do that.)

Geese like manicured lawns. Which is why they make their homes in cemeteries, golf courses and parks. Kirsten Peetz, environmental land manager of the Mill Creek MetroParks, says the geese take advantage of nicely mown turf.

IN: The other big
OUT: advantage of that.
TRT: 21 seconds

(The other big problem we have to address is the fact the geese are attracted to the park. Because it provides the short mown right up to the open water that they need or they want. They don’t like areas were they feel that predators can hide. So all this open lawn area that we create for the enjoyment of people happens to be beneficial to the geese.)

The goose population in Ohio has more than quadrupled in the last 50 years. In 1979, the goose population stood at 18,000. Today, the geese number 84,000. And they live in all counties, as opposed to 49 in 79. And many geese are resident geese. That is, they don’t migrate any more they live here year round.
People can handle their goose problem by using some of the tactic Doug Lyons, northeast manager of Mosquito Lake, uses at his park.

IN: We’ve done several
OUT: to chase geese.
TRT: 21 seconds

(We’ve done several things. The most successful thing we’ve done is we have guns and they shoot blanks. We have routed out coyotes and painted and we put those in various areas and we try to move them weekly. And there’s a white and a black bag in their mouth, so it makes the appearance that the coyote has a goose in its mouth. We have a couple local owners that has collies that are trained to chase geese.)

However, not all of them work well. One of the most debated tactics is wolf silhouettes, some people swear by them. Like Mel Culp, supervisor of operations and facilities for Austintown Schools, says the wooden cut outs worked wonders after he installed them around various school properties.

IN: It’s pretty amazing
OUT: didn’t even land.
TRT: 11 Seconds

(It’s pretty amazing in all honesty. The next morning I was out in the yard when I heard the geese coming and you could hear them coming across the sky and they were honking. They didn’t even land. )

For others, the silhouettes just aren’t worth the hassle. Lyons says the geese get used to them far too quickly.

IN: They work well
OUT: they’re not Coyotes.
TRT: 12 seconds

(They work well when you first put them out and then the geese get used to them. You have to move them around. But eventually, the geese are smart that they know they’re not Coyotes.)

But the goose nuisance isn’t only felt on the ground. In the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Sean Connery’s character, Henry Jones, has an epiphany.

IN: I suddenly remembered
OUT: in the sky
TRT: 9 seconds

(I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks, and the trees, and the birds in the sky.)

You may remember from that scene Connery’s character scares a flock of birds skyward to down a Nazi warplane. It’s the last part of the quote that affects us today. Geese constantly collide with airplanes. In the Mississippi Flyway, there have been 1,299 bird strikes between 1990 and 2010. Flight 1549, now known as the Miracle on the Hudson, was brought down by a collision with a flock of Canada geese.

IN: Now we know
OUT: your engine power
TRT: 5 seconds

(Now we know from the Miracle on the Hudson that’s what happens when you lose your engine power.)

That’s Tara Baranowski, district biologist for the US Department of Agriculture and the Animals and Plant Health Inspection Service, says the Ohio field station is trying to limit the number of strikes.

IN: What they’re trying
OUT: the two colliding.
TRT: 14 seconds

(What they’re looking at is different perceptions of different species of birds and how they can enhance detection of aircraft by birds so that the birds can avoid the aircraft altogether instead of the two colliding.)

The Migratory Bird Act of 1918 had a major impact on the goose population. This bill protects the birds and their eggs and nests from being harmed by any one without a permit first.

Special hunting seasons have been set up so that the over population can be controlled. Hunters can go after the pesky bird two different times a year. The early season in September, and the actual season, which runs from October to January.

So the next time you’re out for a leisurely stroll in the park, or out to visit a loved one’s grave, just remember a few things. A goose can defecate up to 92 times in a day, 50 geese can produce almost a ton and a half of feces in a year and a goose can become aggressive if you don’t have bread for them (Honk Honk Honk) …on second thought, perhaps you’d rather just stay home instead.

For the News Outlet I’m Joel Anderson

There are so many geese at Mill Creek Park that park officials are gathering up their eggs and destroying the embryos and the nests. At Calvary Cemetery on Youngstown’s west side, workers have installed wolf silhouettes in an attempt to protect the dead from the avian adversary. At Austintown Middle School, spring-loaded wolf silhouettes wobble in the wind to frighten off the geese. These are among the many tactics people are using to try to keep geese from invading and leaving their droppings.

For the last 50 years, Ohio and Mahoning County have seen a dramatic rise in the number of geese that live in the area. The problem, experts say, is that the geese – which once migrated to and from Canada—have decided that they like conditions in the state and they no longer make the trip. Instead, they make their homes here, on golf courses, manicured lawns and farmers’ ponds. And area officials are not quite sure how concerned they should be. There is debate about whether geese feces are harmful to humans.

Kirsten Peetz, environmental land manager for the MetroParks, said the geese aren’t held in high regard in society.

“They’re basically described and considered a nuisance just like a rat or groundhogs things like that,” Peetz said.

The first statewide survey conducted in 1979 found geese made nests in 49 of the 88 counties in Ohio with a population of 18,000. Today, geese nest in all counties and their population is 84,000. This is because of the protection granted to them under the Migratory Bird Act. It’s this rise in population that has people worried.

Jamey Graham, media liaison of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, said although Ohio may not have any more of an issue with Canada geese than other states, conditions in the area are perfect for human-goose interaction.

“We have a whole lot of people living in Northeast Ohio or Northern Ohio compared to say southeast Ohio. So there’s going to be a lot more human and wildlife conflicts to begin with for that reason. Also we have a lot of water and a lot of golf courses and both types of habitats, so to speak, provide specific habitats for geese,” Graham said. “Often times on golf courses there are a lot of bodies of water. And we also have a bunch of inland lakes that aren’t even affiliated with golf courses whatsoever. When you look at those aspects we do have a bunch of geese and we do have a lot of people.”

Canada geese make their homes in well-kept areas. The manicured lawns in cemeteries and parks, and also the many suburban lawns, attract the birds because low grass eliminates predatory threats.

Because they live here year round, overpopulation in the area brings many concerns. Non-migratory Canada geese frequently attack humans, ruin property and their feces are suspected to carry many diseases.

Stephen Vantassel, coordinator of wildlife damage management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said science hasn’t specifically linked gees to these health issues.

“Well when you say linked, that’s part of the challenge. Are you referring to whether they carry these diseases or whether they’re transmitting these diseases to infect, like people? That’s where the research gets really thin,” Vantassel said. “This is why it’s probably unwise for people to say ‘You’ve got to get rid of those geese because defecation is a public health threat.’ That’s probably overstating what the evidence says. Even though common sense wise, there probably is a risk there. They just haven’t been able to prove it.”

Visitors at Calvary cemetery deal with geese all the time. One visitor, Diana Begala, said too many geese live here these days.

“I just don’t like to see the big group of geese up here all the time. They make a mess of the cemetery you have to watch where you’re walking,” she said.

Another visitor, Marybeth White, said she sees geese everywhere, not just the cemetery.

“They are messy, I know I go by Wal-Marts and there are a ton of them. I don’t know how they could get rid of them, but they probably should.”

Although Calvary uses the silhouettes, visitors said the silhouettes didn’t seem to be working. Calvary cemetery was contacted several times for a comment, but they chose not to discuss the subject.

Mill Creek MetroParks deals with Canada geese as well. Peetz said that human interaction with the geese has brought a lot of difficulties.

“A lot of people feed them, so that causes the problem with aggression, problems with so much goose fecal matter everywhere. That’s unsightly and unsanitary and we get a lot of complaints about that,” Peetz said.

The MetroParks has tried different tactics to deal with the geese. Along with the silhouettes, the park experimented with border collies, grass length around the waterline for the pond, and addling. Addling means to destroy the nests and terminating embryo development in the eggs. The park needs a permit from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources in order to do this.

Peetz said they can only addle eggs within the first two weeks.

“It takes 35 days for an egg to hatch. So if you do it within the first two weeks, it’s still a yolk. It’s not like there’s a little gosling in there,” Peetz said.

At Mosquito Lake, geese run amuck there also. Doug Lyons, northeast manager of the park, said the best technique for his park is shooting blanks.

“The most successful thing we’ve done is that we have guns that basically shoot blanks and scare the geese,” Lyons said.

Both parks tried using silhouettes, but both said they weren’t worth the effort.

“They work well when you first put them out and then the geese get used to them. You have to move them around. But eventually, the geese are smart that they know they’re not coyotes,” Lyons said. “It’s really a combination of everything that works the best.”

“The problem with those is that when you first put them out there the birds will be wary. But if it’s out there in the exact same position for a few days, then it just becomes a part of the background and they’re no longer going to be disturbed by it,” Peetz said.

While these parks didn’t have much success with the silhouettes, Austintown Middle School did. Mel Culp, supervisor of operations and facilities for Austintown City Schools, said they had serious issues with geese.

“We had our intermediate school that we had a paved basketball court where the children would play in inclement weather. They would go out and play on the hard surface. And because it was a hard surface, it was warm and it attracted the geese too. And the geese would come and stand on that hard surface blacktop all day long,” Culp said. “And they would make a mess. The droppings and everything from the geese it was terrible. So every morning we would go out try and clean that so that the children could go out and play and we were not successful. So the children were never allowed to go out and play in inclement weather.”

In order to deal with the problem, Culp and several colleagues began looking for solutions.

“We ended up finding a website called watch goose patrol. And they sell a black outline that’s in the shape of a dog that’s on a spring mount. And it’s on a rotating mount. So it articulates as it sits out in the yard. I was stunned. The next day they didn’t come back. And we had hundreds of geese,” Culp said.

Dead goose decoys are yet another option to deal with the pests. But Geoff Westerfield, wildlife biologist at the Ohio Department of Wildlife, said these will draw, rather than scare geese.

“Putting out a dead goose decoy probably does more harm than it does good, in that it will actually draw geese to that area,” Westerfield said. “I tell people you can take a five gallon bucket and set it out there and you’ll get the same effectiveness out of putting that dead goose decoy that’s sitting out there because it’s something different that’s out there, and they generally stay away from that kind of stuff.”

Westerfield said there’s a simpler way to deal with a goose problem.

“Believe it or not the most effective method for controlling geese on a property is to just chase them off,” Westerfield said. “But I tell people, you may chase geese today, and tomorrow you’ll have them again. That doesn’t mean those are the same geese you had yesterday.”

If these methods become infrequent, then geese ignore the attempts.

“You gotta keep changing your ways and you gotta keep after them or they just become a problem,” Lyons said.

Parks, cemeteries and schools aren’t the only places that have to worry about dealing with Canada geese; their nuisance can be felt up in the sky as well. Tara Baranowski, district biologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Animals and Plant Health Inspection Service, said airports are feeling their presence as well.

“It starts with the principle question, ‘Why are they here?’” Baranowski said. “What is attracting these geese to this particular airport? It could be a number of things. It could be the turf itself, which is typically what geese like to feed upon. It could be a water body, either a retention pond or some temporary standing water left from rain. It could also be a refuge stop from an otherwise hostile environment.”

Like the parks, cemeteries and schools, airports need to use different tactics to scare off the waterfowl.

“We always like to tell people that there is no one method that’s going to be the silver bullet or the solution. You need to take an integrated approach and there needs to be several different methods in play at once to be effective, because wildlife is very adaptable,” Baranowski said. “This can be from anywhere from altering the vegetation that is there, removing the water or excluding it so the birds or other wildlife can’t access it.”

But these efforts only help for the problem on the ground. In the air is a different story.

“In the Mississippi flyway there have been 1,299 bird strikes from 1990-2010. There were also a reported 324 unidentified goose species that are thought to be Canada geese,” Baranowski said.

A bird strike is when damage is caused to a plane after a collision with a bird. For just Ohio alone, the number is 81, with August having the highest number of reported strikes at 20.

Baranowski said the Ohio field station of National Wildlife Research Center is developing a new lighting system to help decrease the number of bird strikes on airplanes.

“What they’re trying to do is develop some different lighting scenarios that can be applied to aircraft. Right now they’re doing ground base studies of different lighting techniques and scenarios and different arrays of lighting. What they’re trying to see is if they can enhance detectability and avoid ability of bird strikes. What they’re looking at is different perceptions of different species of birds and how they can enhance detection of aircraft by birds so that the birds can avoid the aircraft altogether instead of the two colliding,” Baranowski said.

In 2009, US Airways flight 1549, taking off from LaGuardia airport in New York, was forced to land on the Hudson River after losing power to its engines. The cause was found out to be Canada geese. The collision led to a loss of engine power, forcing the plane to go down.

But under the current regulations from the FAA, loss of engine power is perfectly acceptable as long as the damage is contained only in the cowling, the protective casing that houses the engine, and to the bird itself.

These regulations were first written in the late ‘70s and haven’t been updated much since. In the original specifications, engines only need to test for birds weighing as much as four pounds. Today, that number has increased to six pounds. But the average goose weights around 10 pounds.

“Now we know from the Miracle on the Hudson that’s what happens when you lose your engine power,” Baranowski said.

Geese can also be a problem for farmers as well. David Marrison, extension educator for Ashtabula and Trumbull counties for agriculture and natural resources at Ohio State University, said farm ponds can be a farmer’s biggest concern.

“The biggest things I see is when they’re in around the ponds and their fecal damage. Especially livestock people are watering out of those ponds. So that’s why it’s good to not let them become comfortable nesting on your farm pond,” Marrison Said.

Marrison said the 4H club in Windsor, Ohio has its trouble with Canada geese as well.

“They get some that try and stay around, so they have to scare them to try and get them to go somewhere else. Scaring with noise machines, and there’s enough people around that that become uncomfortable too. As the campers are walking around back and forth, and groups’ using the facility, and just that commotion is a deterrent as well,” Marrison said.

Hunting can help with overpopulation as well. Hunters can set their sights on Canada geese twice a year after they’ve received their permit. The early season targets the resident geese. The season goes for 15 days from Sept. 1 to the 15. The regular season runs from Oct. to Jan.

Peetz said Canada geese aren’t like other pesky critters around the area.

“You need a permit to hunt them. It’s not like a groundhog or something that you can just shoot and kill if it’s on your property,” Peetz said.

Lyons said hunting season helps for a short time. After the season ends, the geese come back.

“I think the solution is, up the limit on the geese you’re allowed to kill. It used to be two, but it’s currently up to four,” Lyons said.

Another tactic parks use to cull the number of resident geese is a “Don’t feed the animals” campaign. What people see as an innocent and natural act, Peetz said is actually very bad for the geese.

“People tend to feed them old bread, or popcorn. And neither of them are natural food for the geese. And they also don’t provide a bunch of nutrients.”

The MetroPark plans on putting in a type of vending machine that distributes feeding pellets rich in nutrients the geese need to live healthy lives. It would also allow people to keep the tradition of feeding geese and other birds at the park.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, University of Akron and professional media outlets including WYSU-FM Radio, The Vindicator, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Shadowed by a harrowing drug addiction, a 53-year-old Mahoning County man has only memories of what life used to be like to comfort his nights sleeping alone on a cot at a rescue mission.

A Wayne County divorcee supports her three kids on $1,280 a month from a thrift store salary and public assistance. After earning a master’s degree in education and struggling to find a steady teaching position, an 84-year-old Stark County woman who survived the Great Depression walks daily from her government-subsidized apartment to the local YWCA for a free meal that she otherwise couldn’t afford.

These are the stories of those living in poverty among Ohio’s northeastern counties. In a bleak economy, the News Outlet wondered if the stereotypical portrait of those struggling had been altered. The profiles presented provide a glimpse into the complicated personal, political and economic turns that contribute to the struggles of the impoverished.

They’ve lost homes to foreclosure.

Their families to drugs and alcohol.

Their dreams to poverty.

The 2005-2009 American Community Survey (PDF) , prepared by the Ohio Department of Development and released in April, has reaffirmed historically higher poverty rates in Ohio’s urban centers — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. But, as a whole, the state is spackled with poverty.

The worst counties hug the Ohio River from Cincinnati to Columbiana County then turn north along the Pennsylvania state line.

In the past decade, Ohio’s poverty population has increased by 46 percent, according to U.S. Census data.

The most recent reports place 1.7 million Ohioans beneath the federal poverty line, scaled from a maximum individual income of $10,890 up to a family of four living on $22,350 or less annually. The Ohio Department of Development report suggested an additional 2 million people are “more or less close to being poor.”

Aside from Cuyahoga County, two Northeast Ohio poverty rates are among the state’s highest — Trumbull at 18.2 percent, Mahoning at 17.1 percent and Columbiana at 17.7 percent.

The poverty rate for Medina (7.6 percent) is among the lowest in the region. Eight Ohio counties, clustered in the southern Appalachian region, had poverty rates higher than 20 percent.

Unemployment has exacerbated poverty in Northeast Ohio, and residents such as Youngstown’s Jimmy Ceballos often forego paying bills and mortgages to pay for food and shelter.

In the 1990s, Ceballos could pick up a side job with little effort. Today, the former handyman wakes up and extinguishes the burn barrel that kept him warm the night before in one of Youngstown’s 4,500 vacant structures.

Ohio’s unemployment rate has grown from 5.6 percent in January 2008 to 9 percent in October 2011, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics.

Youngstown is among the worst (PDF). With 9.6 percent of the area’s work force unemployed in September, only three other metropolitan areas in Ohio — Steubenville, Toledo and Mansfield — posted higher unemployment rates, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

“It’s just been hard,” said Ceballos, who was born and raised on Youngstown’s East Side. “I look at my town, and it makes me sad that things around here used to be so different.”

It’s struck even those who were comfortable — people such as Heidi Hultgren.

She used to count on her teaching salary at Kent State University and her husband’s salary as a research metallurgist at Republic Steel in Cleveland to support her three children and maintain a comfortable middle-class life.

The retired teacher now struggles to live on $1,400 a month from the State Teacher Retirement Fund. Her paycheck goes fast: $600 for a mortgage, $400 for a car payment and $250 for utilities. What’s left is split between insulin to manage her Type One Diabetes and for food.

Director of Kent Social Services Christy Anderson said Hultgren is one of the many people she knows who’s doing the best she can.

“I’ve been working at Social Services since 1979, and these past two years have been the worst I’ve ever seen as far as poverty goes,” Anderson said. “Heidi is one of many who have had employment, but as a turn of the economy lost their job and are struggling to live.”

As the recession has deepened in the past three years, the region’s resources have struggled to keep up with the growing need.

This year, every other family the Salvation Army has helped at the Booth Manor shelter in Akron has been new.

In 2008, the shelter experienced a 43-percent increase in clients served. Families who seek help there consist of single mothers and impoverished couples with young children.

U.S. Census data released in November reported that 620,000 Ohioans under 18 years old live in poverty. Child poverty, which has increased 50 percent since 2003, accounts for more than a third of all Ohioans living in poverty.

Logan, 4, and Joshua, 2, are among those children living in poverty.

Their mother, Amanda Huddleston, rides the public transit with her boys every morning. She leaves them at day care or preschool and continues on to the Medina County Job and Family Services building, where she takes a bus for Wadsworth to work in a factory. She brings home $434 a month and receives public assistance, which puts food on the table but affords little else.

“This isn’t somewhere I want to be for very long,” Huddleston says.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, University of Akron and professional media outlets including WYSU-FM Radio, The Vindicator, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

She clutched a cane in one hand, and except for a slight hop, her gait was lively as she walked through the room and took a seat. Her china-blue eyes stared boldly from behind thick glasses as she began her story.

“I’ve never really wanted a lot of material things, and I’ve never had a lot of material things,” said Mary, who didn’t want to use her last name for this story.

Born in 1927, the 84-year-old remembered growing up during the Great Depression and walking 2 miles with her father to buy milk. Now, decades later, she still has to walk to find what she needs.

Every Tuesday, she leaves her small apartment in Alliance Towers, a government subsidized apartment complex for the elderly, and crosses the street to the Alliance Neighborhood Center for the free evening meal offered there.

“She comes over and visits with us,” said Sandra Loy, director of the Alliance Neighborhood Center. “I talk with her on nice sunny days outside.”

Loy said Mary also stops by occasionally to pick up some free bread that they offer or to pick up something from the clothes closet.

Mary relies on this free food just as she relies on the lunches provided by the YWCA Monday through Thursday for the residents of Alliance Towers.

When she doesn’t have the free meals, Mary cooks what she can. She likes to buy sausage, seasoned tomatoes, plain yogurt, eggs and frozen veggies. She tends to make soups, such as zucchini or other vegetable soup, and then use the leftovers to make some type of chili.

“I thought I could live off of my Social Security. And then, I didn’t realize the last years that I worked, I only worked four to six hours a day … Then, when I found out how much money I was going to get on Social Security I was a bit shocked,” she said.

Each month, Mary gets $647 from Social Security, an income she earned from years working office jobs, brief teaching stints and organizing free meals for seniors and scheduling appointments for Well Child Center (WIC) through Community Action, a non-profit in Sebring.

Bills come in each month, too. Her medical insurance from Medicare costs $135 and her Medicare prescription plan costs another $32. From the $400 left, she pays $80 for her cable and $137 in rent, which is determined based on her income.

That leaves her with $263 for groceries, toiletries, clothes or anything else she might need throughout the month.

“If I want to splurge on something for myself, I buy shrimp.”

Her other little luxuries are the season tickets she buys each year to The Carnation Players, a theater group, and The Alliance Community Concert, each of which costs about $40. The $80 she spends for her expanded cable package with Time Warner Cable is another of her comforts.

At less than $8,000 a year, Mary is well below the 2011 poverty threshold of $10,890 for single-person households in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, she’s just one of the 17.8 percent of Alliance residents living in poverty.

Forty-some years ago, Mary had plenty of money saved from working for a trip she planned to take to Europe. Instead of venturing across the sea, she chose to explore higher education by going to college.

“I liked going to college,” she said. “I could have been a permanent college student.”

However, despite getting a bachelor’s and master’s degree in elementary education from Youngstown State University, Mary’s life was sometimes a struggle.

After she graduated at age 40 with her bachelor’s degree, she worked one year teaching first grade and two years teaching Head Start in Sebring. Then, she decided to obtain a master’s degree, but discovered that the extra education didn’t mean extra job opportunities.

“I priced myself out of teaching when I got the master’s,” Mary said. “The schools didn’t have the money, and they didn’t want somebody with a master’s.”

So, she did some volunteering with different organizations, including a resale shop that used the revenue to operate a food pantry. Her last 10 years of work were through the Senior Community Service Employment Program, which helps seniors find part-time, paid work.

In all those years, she never married. She never had children. But, she wanted them. Mary said her nieces and nephews helped fill up the space, but they still were never her own children.

For years, a neighbor’s son was like a grandson to Mary. She glowed as she spoke of him, now a senior in high school, emphasizing his natural artistic talents.

Although space is limited in her apartment, one of her walls is still a gallery of that boy’s artwork next to a chart marking his growth with school pictures. She keeps a folder of his drawings in her dresser’s bottom drawer. His number is the only one listed on her important numbers chart

But recently, she had a disagreement with the boy’s mother, and she hasn’t spoken to him since. She even missed his 18th birthday party. Every night, Mary thinks about calling him, but hasn’t yet.
Pennie Dowdy, 62, her neighbor and friend of 10 years, said Mary stops by every single day, sometimes even two or three times, for a cup of coffee and a visit.

The two met years ago when they went to a class about cleaning with green products at the Alliance Neighborhood Center where Dowdy’s daughter, Kim, taught.

Dowdy recently moved into Alliance Towers. Living right next door to each other makes it convenient for Mary to stop by and chat with Dowdy, who can’t get around as easily in her wheelchair.

“I think our friendship helped both of us,” Dowdy said.

Mary was the only person Dowdy knew in the building, and Dowdy is always willing to keep her friend company, chatting about their shared passion for crafting.

Dowdy went on to talk about how active Mary is, walking all over town with her little purple backpack and cane. Dowdy said Mary even started volunteering to help those at A Place for Mom, an Alzheimer’s care center in Alliance, by doing crafts.

Although she’s motivated, even Mary has her bad days when the weather and her lack of visitors weighs heavily on her and disrupts her mood.

“Sometimes I think she’s depressed. She doesn’t do well on days it’s not sunny,” Dowdy said.

It’s been about 12 years since Mary stopped working, and she’s starting to feel age creeping up on her in various ways from her cataracts to a damaged rotator cuff in her left shoulder.

“I’m tired, and I don’t feel good,” she said, brushing one of her thin hands against the other resting on her leg. Still, she counts herself as fortunate compared to other seniors.

“I’m lucky. I only have to take blood pressure medicine,” she said.

Mary’s thin, bird-like frame was outlined against the glass doors by the soft glow that filled her apartment’s lobby. Her straight, snow-white hair was like corn silk as it swept her narrow shoulders.

To a passer-by who has never heard the soft-spoken story of her life, the woman in the rose-patterned shirt might be anyone’s grandmother – instead of no one’s.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Bethany English is a senior magazine journalism major at Kent State University. This past summer, she interned as a features reporter with The Columbus Dispatch. She has also written for The Daily Kent Stater, Kent State University’s newspaper and Artemis, a women’s issues magazine. Of the stories she’s written, she is most proud of her story about the inequity of male and female professors at Kent State and the research the university is conducting to lessen the gap. She gets her news from online news sites such as The Washington Post and The New York Times for national news or The Record Courier for local news.

By Julie Sickel
TheNewsOutlet.org

Five years. That’s how long Amanda Huddleston has given herself.

Five years to get out of Section 8 housing. Five years to be off government aid and Food Stamps. Five years to finish her college degree and begin a real career.

By then, Amanda will be 31 and her boys, Logan and Joshua will be 9 and 7. She’ll be able to afford to pay for things like jackets and boots for her sons without her parents’ help.

In the meantime, Amanda will wake up every weekday and board the public transit with Logan and Joshua, see them off to daycare and preschool and then arrive at the Medina County Job and Family Services building at 232 Northland Drive and take the 8:15 a.m. bus with 10 to 25 other workers to the Medina Assembly and Packaging factory in Wadsworth. At the factory, she’ll do everything from sorting recycling to making boat straps.

Amanda is 26. Her light brown hair is pulled up into in a neat bun on her head. She wears glasses and holds a box of contact solution in her small, pale hands. When she’s not speaking, she keeps her lips neatly rested together and the curves of her mouth in a tired smile.

She is a member of the Ohio Works First program. She works 86 hours a month –less than the normally required 129 hours because her sons are younger than 6. She earns $434 in cash. Cheryl Mason, eligibility specialist at MCJFS, said Amanda receives $526 in Food Stamps each month as a two-child parent and pays an $8 per month co-pay for her children’s daycare.

Amanda is what another MCJFS representative called “a shining star” because of her work ethic. However, the work she does every day until her return from the factory at 2:15 p.m. cannot be counted as “work experience” on a resume. It’s government aid.

Life wasn’t always like this for Amanda. She used to be independent. She had a car, a house and a job at a daycare that she loved. That was before she got pregnant with Logan and found out she had heart problems. Three months after he was born, she went in for heart surgery and came out with a load of medical bills.

“It just kind of threw me off. I was able to work but (Logan) was 3 months old when I had the surgery done and I couldn’t find anything,” she says.

Logan and Joshua have two different fathers. Logan’s father pays child support, but is otherwise removed from the family. Joshua’s father works just long enough before quitting so he doesn’t have to pay child support, said Amanda.

“I just got myself in a situation and now I’m trying to get myself out, and it’s hard. It’s very hard.”

Her situation doesn’t keep Amanda from enjoying her time with her boys. Dancing was her favorite thing to do before Logan was born. Now, she dances around the house with her two boys instead, laughing and feeling silly. The smile on her face when she talks about her sons is lively and very different from the smile she wears when she talks about the future.

Amanda eventually graduated from Cuyahoga Community College with a degree in medical assisting. Six months after graduation, she went back to school to study nursing, but eventually withdrew. It’s been too long since she’s worked in medical assisting for her to be hired. Now she’s in default for thousands of dollars in student loans.

Amanda interviewed for three jobs in the past month and is hoping to hear something soon.

Mead Wilkins, director of MCJFS, said Amanda’s story isn’t unique. Many of the workers in Ohio Works program are single mothers who aren’t getting child support.

“You have the young mom with two children and she can’t get out of poverty,” Wilkins said. “You’re just holding on by your fingertips.”

Wilkins said the goal of the program is to teach workers the life skills they can use to eventually gain employment, things like working hard and being to work on time.

“This isn’t somewhere I want to be for very long,” Amanda says, drumming her fingers on the contact solution box still in her hands. “I mean, I’m thankful for it and the cash I get helps me. But this is not something that I ever thought I’d be doing.

“It seems like when I try to get one step ahead, I fall 20 steps backwards,” she says shaking her head.

Then the weary single mother, who spent the day packaging holiday cookies in brightly colored Christmas tins, places her hands flat on the table in front of her, closes her eyes and sighs before concluding, “One day it will all come together.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

By JORDAN UHL
TheNewsOutlet.org

In early November, Donna Jarvis had $60 to her name and a faint hope that her finances were going to improve.

The 54-year-old Freedom Township resident said she always had decent jobs and managed to live more than paycheck-to-paycheck.

In 2007, however, Jarvis found lost her steady job at a customer service call center. Since then, she hasn’t been able to get a job that would last for more than a few weeks.

In November, after years of struggling to feed herself and keep her utilities on, she got a job as a medical assistant at a skilled-care facility in Portage County. She had hoped the job, which pays just above minimum wage, might help her end what had been a long period in extreme poverty.

Jarvis’ fall from the middle class began in 2002 when she and her husband of 27 years got divorced.

“Instead of getting money, I got a dilapidated house,” Jarvis said.

Endless repairs on her four-bedroom old house in Freedom Township transformed what was to serve as her only source of comfort into another worry. New hot water tanks, pumps for her well and water storage tanks have continually put dents in her minimal funds.

She does hold the deed to the home, however.

“[That was] important because I knew that no matter what happened at least I was going to have a place to live. Even if I’d have to be sitting in the dark with no water,” Jarvis said. “It’s pretty nice to know that you’re not going to be living in your car.

While homelessness has never been a real worry, Jarvis said watching pennies has been a constant obsession.

“I have a ton of debt that’s unpaid, “ Jarvis said, estimating that she now owes more than $25,000.

Credit card and cell phone bills are loom constantly. She is behind on her trash bill and faces defaulting on her car insurance facing default.

“I haven’t been able to make payments on them because I knew what little money I had left, had to go to put gas in my car.”

She participates in an income-based payment plan for her gas and electric bills. To keep those utilities on, she’s had to borrow money from her 35-year-old son, who lives Copley.

“There’s a lot of things that I don’t have anymore,” she said. “If I want to watch a movie, I go to the library.”

“I went through every bit of savings that I had, every bit of 401K,” Jarvis said. “All of that’s gone.”

She collects a couple hundred dollars worth of Food Stamps each month

The closest she comes to an evening out is a hot meal at the Christian Cupboard in Ravenna. The emergency food pantry provides a daily hot meal to area residents in need, but it’s more than that to Jarvis.

“It’s not just a hot meal, there’s a lot of camaraderie there,” Jarvis said. “It gets you out of your house, lifts your spirits. There’s the workforce center, the library. That’s been a blessing and a half right there.”

Sister Denise Stiles, manager of the Center of Hope, of which the Christian Cupboard is a part, has witnessed Jarvis’ increased reliance on the center.

Eventually, Stiles began to view Jarvis more as a friend than as a repeat client.

“Things took a bad turn for her recently,” Stiles said.

Jarvis often confided in Stiles, and while she didn’t expect her problems to be solved, the listening ear gave her a general sense of wellbeing.

Whe price of a gallon of gas costing more than two loaves of bread, Jarvis finds getting around to be a struggle as well.

Yet, Jarvis hasn’t given up and is investing in her future. Last year, she enrolled in a medical assistant program at Northcoast Medical Training Academy in Kent.

Jarvis took out two loans and a Pell grant pay for the program, which she estimates costs about $16,000.

Just as things started to appear to better, she got into a car accident on her way home from class.

“I nodded off and failed to stop at a stop sign. I ended up totaling my car.”

She also had broken bones, internal bruises and thousands of dollars in medical bills.

Again, she pressed on, completing her schooling, attaining her medical assistant’s diploma and beginning her search for employment.

At first, prospects were bleak, despite the numerous classified advertisements regarding openings in the field.

“I could go into the medical field or be a truck driver,” Jarvis said. “Those were the two (areas) where people were always hiring.”

In mid-November, Jarvis was hired as a medical assistant at New Leaf Residential where she will earn $9 per hour.

“I’m really, really excited. I’m looking forward to meet the people I’m going to be taking care of,” Jarvis said.

It’s not smooth sailing from here, though.

“It’s my first job in the medical field, and its entry level,” Jarvis said about her nerves and a lower-than-expected pay scale.

“The thing is, I need an income,” she said. “I’m happy to have it.”

Optimism radiates from Jarvis, who hasn’t allowed her woes to completely bring her down.

“Maybe it’s my calling. Maybe I’ll be able to take this somewhere else.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Jordan D. Uhl of Canfield is majoring in senior political science major and pursuing minors in journalism and philosophy. Aside from being a News Outlet intern, he is the news editor at The Jambar, the student-run paper at Youngstown State University. His favorite piece featured the views of an Egyptian student at YSU during the revolution in Egypt. He was able to localize a national news story in a creative, yet relevant way. He gets his news from The Economist, The Atlantic and PopUrls, a news aggregator. He enjoys distance running and live music.

Last year, Anthony Larson returned to the Akron area to take care of his ill mother.

Now, she is in a nursing home. He got injured and lost his job. And the bills keep coming.

“I am a college graduate with two degrees,” said the 44-year-old Lawson. “I have a bachelor’s in administrative services and an associate’s in culinary arts.”

He moved to Akron from Dallas, where he was a restaurant manager, making $40,000 a year. He and his wife had a combined annual income of $80,000.

“We used to have three vehicles,” Lawson said, his knees bouncing nervously. “Now we are down to one and my wife drives that one.”

His wife works in Cincinnati because she couldn’t find a job in Akron.

Larson, however, did find work.

“I was working as a chef at a restaurant in Akron,” said Lawson. “But I tore my rotator cuff in April.”

Losing that job was hard, but losing the health benefits was even harder.

“I have diabetes and I needed medicine.”

He eventually found himself at Open M Ministries, a clinic in Akron, where he receives medical treatment.

“Open M helped me with my medical supplies and blood pressure medicine.”

Kristina Holwerda, the clinic manager, described Lawson as appreciative and friendly.

“He is not that talkative, but he is approachable. Everyone who works with him loves him.”

Lawson was surprised to learn there were others like him reaching out for help.

“When I first went to Job and Family Services for assistance, I thought that I would see more single moms. Now there are husbands and wives, who have bachelor’s and master’s degrees, whose companies have just let them go.”

He isn’t the only person to notice the change in clientele.

“There has been a big shift in terms of people who have never been in this situation before,” Holwerda said. “This is their first time trying to find insurance and they are naive about how to use the services.”

While Lawson gets help with medical supplies, he still has $1,800 worth of other bills every month. There are utility bills, two child support payments, his mother’s taxes and insurance, and his car loans.

One of his children is a junior in at Kent State University. The other two, an 18-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son, live with his wife in Cincinnati.

What he misses most about having a job, was being able to give things to his children.

“It’s more of a mental grind to not have what you used to have,” said Lawson. “No weekend getaways or going out to dinner – things like that don’t come around a lot.”

Holwerda explained that the “new poor” have trouble asking for help.

“I constantly have to tell the new patients that it is OK to ask for help,” said Holwerda. “To them it feels wrong, they feel like they are taking help (away) from people who should be getting it.”

Lawson agreed it is hard to ask for help, but he is confident he will be able to get back on his feet.

“I used to let the pride get to me, but I got over that really quickly,” said Lawson. “It’s tough, but I still have a roof over my head and I’m still eating.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Loren Thomas is a senior at Kent State University, where she is a broadcast journalism major, with a minor in business. Also, she is a member of the university’s track and field team. She has been involved in student media for three years. She has worked as a co-anchor and assistant producer. She also had an internship with WTXL-ABC 27 in Tallahassee, Fla. She is most proud of her final project in Advanced Broadcast. The story was about work-from-home Internet scams and a victim who lost $20,000. Some of her work can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/user/LorenNThomas

In 2004, Sally Criss was living the American dream. She was a stay-at-home mom. There were cars in the garage, food on the table and lights on in the house. Although, her husband made enough money to support the family, she worked in her church’s nursery to make a little extra money.

Seven years later, Criss is 44, living in Orrville and divorced. Her children, ages 5, 16 and 19, are living with her. They survive on $1,280 a month.

The American dream turned ugly when Criss’ husband, Steve, began to drink again after being sober for 12 years. He was arrested and convicted of driving while intoxicated three times: November 2004, August 2005 and August 2009. Then he lost his job as a sales representative with her father’s dairy supply company, Independent Buyers Association of Ohio. Shortly after being demoted to warehouse custodian, he quit his job.

“The first time he was in jail for 30 days, I was 8-months pregnant,” Criss said. “There was no income and a mess of financial issues he had left behind for me to untangle.”

While her ex-husband was serving his sentences in the Wooster Community Jail, she was not getting child support and was forced to find a job.

“While Steve was in jail, it was very difficult,” Criss said. “There is now only one parent and you take on full responsibility for everything.”

The couple divorced in 2008.

“For many years divorce was not an option I considered,” Criss said.

She was able to get financial help from the Ohio Works First, a program where people in financial difficulty can receive cash assistance for 36 months. She also received $175 in Food Stamps. The program also helped her find a job at New Destinations, a thrift store in Wooster.

“When I went in for the first time, the manager said that I didn’t fit the typical ‘welfare mom’ stereotype.”

Just when things were going a bit more smoothly, Criss’ daughter turned 18 and was no longer considered a dependent. The $500 a month that Criss used to get was cut to $175 because the money her daughter earned at a part-time job was considered part of the family income.

“When the money was cut … honestly … I cried. It was such a drastic cut, winter was coming up, and I knew my gas bill would triple, Christmas was on its way, and all of my tight budget would be going to groceries.

“The tears were primarily frustration and anger for being in this situation and not knowing how to get out.”

After 10 months, Criss got out of the program and found her current job at an Orrville Goodwill thrift store.

“When she came to us for the job, she discussed going through her divorce, being a single mother, and stating that she really needed the extra help,” said Kelly Warren, the assistant manager of the Goodwill store. “She was the same as she as today. She is nice and humorous,” Warren said.

Criss has worked at the Goodwill store for a year and a half and has built good friendships with her co-workers.

“I think it’s a counseling for her. Most of the girls here are in the same boat,” Warren said.

She earns about $800 a month with no benefits and gets $480 a month in child support and the $175 a month in food stamps.

She spends about $700 a month on the phone, car insurance, and cable/ Internet bills. Her expects her gas bill to be around $300 a month this winter. She spends the $280 she has left on childcare, preschool and babysitters for her youngest child, and guitar lessons for her teenage son.

She is lucky enough to not have to pay a mortgage or car payment.

When Criss was going through her divorce, her parents, Perry and Karen Vance, paid off her house and car. “I feel guilty and ashamed that my parents spent that amount of money for us when I’m at an age that I should be paying the bills myself.”

“Those are just short-term solutions,” Karen, said. The car will still need maintenance and the bills still need to be paid. She and her husband just provided some stability in Criss’ life.

Karen can’t imagine what her daughter’s life would be like if she had to make a car and mortgage payment.

“The hard part is not doing too much to where someone loses all their self esteem and skills,” Karen said. “Of course I’m proud of her because she is so strong willed. Adversity brings out the best in people and that’s what I see happening in Sally.”

Criss doesn’t see it that way. She says she has no idea how to move herself out of poverty.

“We went from middle class to the B-rate rabble that people stereotype,” Criss said.

The poverty level for a family of four is $22,350 a year, according to a 2011 report by the U.S. Health and Human Services Administration. Criss makes about $15,360 a year.

“I just do without,” she said.

Criss is forced to think creatively when money is tight. She only drives when she has to and she waits until she can complete several errands at one time in order to save gas. Instead of buying multi snack packs of potato chips, she buys a large bag and divides that up for school lunches. She went from buying organic foods, and fresh fruits and vegetables to shopping at discount grocery stores and farmer’s markets. She buys a lot of off-brand products, too.

She does most of the cooking for her family. They only dine on special occasions.

During the summer, she walks her children to the park or to the pool instead of driving them there.

“I do my best to provide a normal life for my kids. I don’t want them to feel poor,” Criss said. “You have to figure out what is important. It’s a humbling experience. Then you find out you’re pretty strong.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

By KACY STANDOHAR
TheNewsOutlet.org

LISBON

Karen Tohm used to love baking pies and cakes for her family. Now that baking is her only means of survival, she can barely stand it.

“It used to be fun and enjoyable, but now it’s a pain that I have to do it,” she said. “It’s work now … and I don’t like it.”

Every Friday, the 46 year-old drives 17 miles from her home in Lisbon to the flea market at Rogers Community Auction where she sells pies, cakes and other baked goods.

“I tried selling junk, but junk don’t sell,” Tohm said.

She leaves home at 6 a.m. and arrives by 8 a.m. to set up her booth outside B Building. By 5 p.m., she will have sold everything she brought. Anything leftover, she will donate or sell at a community auction. She will have made $100.

She will stop for gas and fast food before heading for home, a basement apartment provided by her aunt and uncle, the Revs. Raymond and Phyllis Tohm, both of whom are pastors at Threshing Floor Ministries outside of Lisbon.

“I usually make about $400 to $500 dollars a month. It’s been less lately due to gas prices.”

Those high gas prices also mean that her regular customers from Pittsburgh won’t travel to Rogers for her pies and that she can’t visit her daughter in Niles.

She spends about $200 a month for baking supplies at Aldi’s or Marc’s, $60 for van insurance and $50 for rent.

“That usually leaves me with $190 dollars for my dog’s food, shampoo and my cell phone bill.”
She can’t afford health insurance and receives government assistance in order to purchase groceries. She doesn’t have cable, but gets movies from vendors at Rogers.

“The guy there sells movies two for $5,” Tohm said. “They’re old, but who cares? I haven’t seen them.”

Tohm used to be married and has three children: two sons, 29 and 22, and a daughter, 28.

After a battle with crack cocaine and a back injury, Tohm hit rock bottom. Her injury, due to a fall, worsened after incorrectly lifting while doing yard work.

“I had a MRI that shows three bulging discs – one in my neck, one between shoulder blades and one in the middle of my back. The doctor said they were not bad enough to operate on, but they were bad enough to give me injections to take down swelling and inflammation.”

The relief was temporary.

“I went into a depression and dabbled in drugs when my husband left me for another woma. My children disowned me after that. I wanted to kill myself, but didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger.”

Tohm previously worked at Astro Shapes in Struthers where she ran the saw, moved metal and performed other tasks. Later, she worked as a paint line inspector at Black Hawk Automotive Plastics in Salem, but found the required productivity difficult after her injury.

“They needed me to stand for eight hours, and I can’t do that. Here (at the flea market) I can sit, stand and go in my car to get warm.”

Tohm’s situation used to be worse.

“If it wasn’t for my aunt and uncle, taking me under their wing and letting me live with them, I would be in worse shape,” Tohm said. “I lived in my car for six months and before that I lived in a tent at a campground for three months.”

Tohm’s uncle, 75, said she was appearing before a judge in Warren regarding her drug use when he and his wife arrived at the courthouse.

“Her father wasn’t able to care for her, and the judge allowed us to become her guardians,” he said. “We were able to keep her out of jail and give her a basement apartment in our home.”

Her aunt said Karen’s drug problem had escalated and she was in and out of shelters in Mahoning County.

“She looked like an 80-pound weakling,” she said. “ I almost didn’t recognize her when I saw her.”
Now, Tohm spends her Wednesdays and Thursdays baking and packaging her items. They are sealed with a label reading, “Karen’s Kitchen. She is careful to follow all the rules in the Cottage Food Law, even listing ingredients in descending order by weight.

Tohm bakes an assortment of items, including pound cakes, banana nut bread, cinnamon rolls, lemon bars, nut roll, blonde brownies, gingerbread, pumpkin and peanut butter cookies. Her pies include apple, strawberry raspberry, blackberry, pecan and peach.

“I taught myself (how to bake) and watched my mother cook all the time,” she said. “I can still picture her in the kitchen.”

Unlike most bakers, Tohm doesn’t use a stationary or hand mixer.

“I have no mixer. I do everything the old-fashioned way, the way my mother and grandmother taught me how to do in the beginning. I mix everything by hand.”
Her small pies cost $3 and her larger pies, $6.50.

“Some people take the labels off and say they made it themselves. I don’t care as long as the money’s in my pocket,” she said.

Frank Gutierez, a frequent shopper at Roger’s Flea Market said he enjoys her homemade approach.

“It tastes better,” Gutierez said. “It’s not commercial like at the grocery stores where everything is mass produced.”

Gutierez buys everything from snack foods to tools and tires at the flea market.

“Just about anything that strikes my fancy,” he said

Gutierez often teases Tohm, but knows she works hard.

“I like to torment her but most of the people here are using their sales as a second income … this is her life.”

Tohm usually sets up outside because vendor spots inside the building cost $35 to $40. After Christmas, she’ll move inside when the spots drop to $20.

Tohm’s struggle with money has left her unable to afford surgery or medical attention to repair her back.

“I’ve tried clinics but forget about it. There’s a long waiting list,” she said.

Although each day is a fight for Tohm, she carries a lighthearted attitude with a comical approach. She’ll be four years sober this February.

“I got off the drugs by the grace of God. I tried myself and couldn’t do it,” said Tohm. “He gets all the credit.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, University of Akron and professional media outlets including WYSU-FM Radio, The Vindicator, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Kacy Standohar is a junior at Youngstown State University, where she is majoring in journalism. Besides being an intern at the News Outlet, she is the features editor at The Jambar, the student-run newspaper, and a majorette. She is a member of the Society for Collegiate Journalists. Her favorite article was on YSU’s decision not to renovate Wick-Pollock House. Her favorite news sources are The Jambar, Yahoo News and CNN.com. She hopes to write for a newspaper or magazine upon graduation.

By RALPH A. LEWIS III
TheNewsOutlet.org

Jimmy Ceballos usually starts his day by putting out a flaming barrel of newspaper and clothes. The same barrel that the night before kept him from freezing while he slept.

About a month ago, while sleeping on the first floor of an abandoned home in Campbell, the heating barrel burned through the bottom and eventually burned down the house. He barely made it out alive.

“I just remember waking up and thinking I must be dreaming, the flames were so bright,” said Ceballos. “The heat was unbearable, I wrapped myself in the only blanket I had and ran outta the house through the back door.”

It’s an odd form of luck.

“Some people play the lottery hoping to win millions, thinking how much their life would be better if they had hundreds and thousands of dollars. My life is a lottery too and I am pretty close to crapping out,” said Ceballos.

Ceballos, 55, was born and raised on the East side of Youngstown. Twenty years ago, he was a neighborhood handyman, specializing in helping others with car troubles which is the only kind of work he has ever known.

With no college degree and no high school diploma, finding a job was challenging.

“It’s just been hard man, real hard to find work around here. I look at my town and it makes me sad that things around here used to be so much different,” said Ceballos. “I can’t blame it all on the city, I’m no angel. I’ve played a part in my own misery.”

Ceballos said he lost his job as a handyman because he experimented with drugs and became an alcoholic. Since that time Ceballos’s life has felt the sting of those mistakes.

Since escaping the burning house, Ceballos has been relying on friends for places stay and a means to earn extra money.

“I do everything for him. I clean his clothes if he needs it. I feed him if he’s hungry. And, if I need help around the store I give him some money,” said Valerie Tucker, an cashier at the Speed Check on Wilson Avenue in Campbell. “He’s in here at least five days a week helping me out and he is always so positive no matter what his situation is.”

When asked why she helps Ceballos, Tucker said he is such a good person and she knows he needs the help.

Each month, Ceballos walks or catches a ride to Mahoning County Jobs and Family Services to get his Social Security check ($600) and Food Stamps ($150).

Ceballos keeps his money with him, but keeps his other belongings in whatever house he is squatting in at the time. This varies weekly.

Amy Shotts of Youngstown Auto Wrecking is also familiar with Ceballos who performs odd jobs for her.

“One thing I can say about him is that he always looks presentable given the situation he’s in,” said Shotts. “He’s been coming around here for at least two years, helping me out cleaning up, taking out trash and I never mind paying him because he’s helpful.”

Shotts hopes Ceballos will find more stable housing in the future. However, when it comes to his future Ceballos says he has no worries.

“I have a strong faith in God and it’s through his wisdom and power am I able to live on and be happy,” said Ceballos. “I just know that He is going to look out for me so I have no reason to be sad. I am alive and have great friends. I don’t need anything else.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Ralph Lewis III comes by his interest in sports naturally. His dad is an assistant coach for the Charlotte Bobcats. Lewis III has lived in Sacramento, Calif.; Seattle and Philadelphia. In 2006, he came to Youngstown State University to play basketball and now plays for an adult league. Lewis, who is studying journalism, hopes to be a sportswriter. He has shadowed sportswriters at the Philadelphia Enquirer and has written for The Jambar, YSU’s student-run newspaper.

Bamuamba Kabeya is the best homeless chess player at Haven of Rest Ministries, a Market Street shelter in Akron.

He’s not the best because of his talent, two engineering degrees or the knowledge he wields as a graduate assistant of statistics.

He’s the best because he knows the rules.

For chess and life he said, “castle as fast as you can … They know that I beat them. I beat my fellow American,” Kabeya touts with a rhythmic African accent.

Kabeya arrived at the homeless shelter about a year ago. He carries his life – toothbrush, clothes, shoes, comb, books – in an ottoman-sized purple tote. The tote stays at the shelter each day as he walks across Market Street around 8 a.m. to the University of Akron, where he’s a graduate assistant and student.

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1960s, Kabeya is too proud to admit his age. His late father bought him a plane ticket for Belguim in 1978, where Kabeya said he earned an engineering degree from Les Facultes Universitaires Catholiques de Mons.

While in Belguim, one of his six siblings, Julie Kabeya, applied Bamuamba for a visa through the U.S. Department of State’s Diversity Visa program. She wanted her family near, so she sponsored his visa.

His application was accepted, and he arrived at his sister’s home in Columbus in 1997.

The visa lottery program supplied Kabeya with a job at Gate Gourmet, an airline catering company. The job, in turn, allowed Kabeya to leave his sister’s home.

“It was an easy job, packing. I am new in America, and there is no reason to refuse that first job,” Kabeya said.

His son, Moses, was born around the time Kabeya was laid off in 2003. He had one of the 135,000 aviation jobs that disappeared after 9/11.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering technology at DeVry University in 2004 and left Columbus in 2007 after troubled relations with his wife. Without a vehicle, he hasn’t seen his son since.

In 2007, a colleague from Devry suggested that he pursue a master’s degree at Youngstown State University. He failed to meet the GPA requirement and left Youngstown for Canton a year later with $30,000 in student loan debt.

In Canton, Kabeya unsuccessfully looked for employment between 2008-10. He had no money and no means to get it.

He survived through “charity and friends and God.”

“As you see, I’m alive. God. God’s intervention through people” made that possible, Kabeya said.

His strong faith in God clashes with his pragmatic view of life and a critical view of the American lifestyle.

He’s an immigrant who strongly opposes illegal immigration. He lives at the mercy of others, but wields opinionated conservative beliefs.

“You have in front of you an opinionated guy,” Kabeya admits. In the communal area of the homeless shelter, he doesn’t shy from provocative discussion.

His thought process is systematic and calculated. It’s fitting for an engineering graduate and a statistics instructor.

“He’s inquisitive. He’s intelligent. He’s outspoken in his beliefs … He’s biblical,” said Brian McGuinness, a Bible class leader at the church Kabeya attends every Sunday.

“He’s a genuine person. With Bam, what you see is what you get. There’s no pretense. No hidden agenda.”

McGuinness, who invited Kabeya to his home for Thanksgiving dinner, said he is “blessed” to have Kabeya in his life.

In at least one way, Kabeya is equally blessed to have McGuinness around.

Before Kabeya could apply to the University of Akron, he needed Calculus III, a prerequisite for the graduate program. With $30,000 in student loans, Kabeya enrolled in the class without knowing how he would afford tuition.

His Bible group at The Chapel on Fir Hill and McGuinness, who Kabeya calls his “brother in Christ,” gathered $800 to help finance the class and jumpstart Kabeya’s education. He passed the class and entered the graduate program.

At the University of Akron, he tutors statistics and grades papers for professors. He plans to tutor on the side to supplement the $500 he earns every two weeks from his graduate assistant position.

A portion of his earnings is stashed away for an apartment after he leaves the shelter in January. The long-term residential program at Haven of Rest Ministries provides room and board for nine to 12 months. He’s been there nearly a year.

He’s not sure where he’ll live, but he’s pragmatic in choosing the right place.

“There are plenty people who will want (my) money. It is the market that will decide,” Kabeya said, though he’s leaning toward an apartment in the $300 range.

At the shelter he grabs his head, throbbing from a neglected toothache.

The tooth has become unbearable. As the winter becomes less agreeable, the pain surges and ebbs.

He’ll visit the emergency room, not because he has no insurance, but because he knows the rules.

“I am homeless with not a lot of means. I am going to the hospital,” Kabeya said. “I will go because I am aware of how the system works … The Constitution is good for me. American liberties are good for me.”

He may not be able to afford a dentist, but Kabeya can take care of himself. He educates himself on student loans and library books.

He knows how to eat and sleep free of charge.

“If he’s doing something to get himself out of the shelter and have a better life, then I am proud of him,” said Julie Kabeya, who last spoke to her brother in the summer.

Bamuamba Kabeya has plans. His ticket out of poverty is tapping into the tutoring business.

“The latest figures I heard, $9 billion industry. My share is there,” Kabeya said, confidently. “I can do it. Why? Because I have the skill; I know how to explain things; I know how to motivate people … I know my mathematics, and now I am putting statistics on top.”

“In short, I am in high demand, and I know it.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Doug Livingston of Vienna brings an investigative and analytical element to the News Outlet team. His previous work, reporting on government issues, drug rehabilitation and other social issues, derives from his interest to explore the causes of poverty, crime and blight ravaging inner-city communities. He is a 2001 graduate of Mathews High School. He has studied English at Ohio State University and Columbus State Community College before returning to the Youngstown area to take up journalism at Youngstown State University.

By CAITLIN FITCH
TheNewsOutlet.org

It’s 5 p.m. on a Sunday and there’s no one at the FJKluth Art Gallery in downtown Kent.

A gray-haired woman wearing a black-and-white sweater, a long black skirt and black stockings walks around the room and periodically glances at the door.

“There are a lot of people here. Don’t you see?” said Heidrun Hultgren, with a nervous laugh.

If no one attends her planned lecture at the gallery, the rest of her month is going to be rough financially.

The out-of-work, 70-year-old art history professor depends on donations from lectures to stretch her monthly stipend enough to pay bills, buy medicine and to eat more than one meal a day.

At a few minutes after 5 p.m., three people are seated on folding, brown metal chairs in the gallery. Hultgren appears more at ease.

“Eat some food, have something to drink, look around,” she said, trying to make her guests feel welcome.

German-born Hultgren came to the United States when she was 24 with her husband, Frank, hoping to live the American dream. Through the years, the dream has faded, the economy has faltered, and her efforts to get by have fallen short.

She and her husband divorced, she lost her part-time teaching job and she has little contact with her three children. That’s just part of her story.

There is more, like the fact she has diabetes and often can’t afford insulin, that makes her story compelling.

Hultgren met and married her husband in 1964 in Germany. They moved to Ohio where they had three children. He worked as a research metallurgist at Republic Steel in Cleveland and the family lived a middle-class life in Burton.

“When I came here, I didn’t have to work because my husband made enough money to support us. But after my youngest child was in kindergarten, I went back to work.”

In 1985, Hultgren began teaching art history at Kent State University. She worked there as a part-time instructor until 2007, when she retired.

She knew that her retirement income would not be enough to sustain her so she negotiated a deal with Kent that allowed her to continue teaching on a part-time basis.

That arrangement ended in January 2011, when school officials told her that graduate assistants would be taking over the courses she had been teaching.

Hultgren is not bitter about what happened at the university, but she definitely misses the money.

She collects $1,400 each month in State Teacher Retirement Funds from her 20 years of teaching. She does not collect Social Security or any other income from her late husband because of their 1996 divorce.

She spends $600 for the mortgage on the home she owns in Kent. Another $400 each month goes for the car payment on her 2004 Jeep, which she can no longer drive because she cannot afford the gas and because of her failing eyesight. About $250 or so goes to other bills: electric, gas, insurance and phone.

She is left with about $150 each month to pay for insulin, food and anything else she might need. She must pay $103 for her insulin, with insurance making up the remaining $30.

Even before losing her teaching job, she faced financial problems.

“Since I was part time they only pay $3,000 per course. I taught usually four sometimes three courses each semester and one maybe in the summer.”

Her annual salary before January was $24,000. Now she earns about $16,800.

“I don’t have enough money to live on.”

Hultgren knows that there are people in worse shape.

She is grateful for Kent Social Services, where she eats lunch four days a week and dinner once a week.

“Only thing I have is that I do eat once a day. I eat one meal, and a can of soup. Social services really helps me out,” she said.

Christy Anderson, director of Kent Social Services, said Hultgren is one of the many people she knows going through economic difficulties, and doing the best she can.

“I’ve been working at Social Services since 1979, and these past two years have been the worst I’ve ever seen as far as poverty goes,” Anderson said. “Heidi is one of many who have had employment but as a turn of the economy lost their job and are struggling to live.”

“We see people who have next to nothing. She does her best and any way social services can help her or anyone else we can.”

Hultgren owns a home in Burton, where she and her family lived until 1996, when she moved to Kent. She is trying to sell the house, but her efforts are complicated by the fact that it has a faulty furnace and other problems.

“My house in Burton has many problems I have to fix, but cannot afford. I have tried to sell it, but in this market no one is buying,” said Hultgren. “I bought my Jeep in December and lost my job in January. After I went back to (return) it, they said they cannot buy a 2004 Jeep back, so I try to sell what I have but it is not working.”

In addition to neglecting the home in Burton, Hultgren’s meager finances also force her to neglect her health.

Her last stint in the hospital, in November, was due to a lack of insulin.

“I was in the hospital because my sugar was so high because I couldn’t afford insulin anymore,” said Hultgren. “In five years, I will probably be dead. I cannot afford my insulin and it is a necessity for my health. I will continue to try and sell what I have, but if I cannot, I don’t know what will happen,” said Hultgren.

“I just want to live.”

Hultgren said her children have not been helpful.

“They want nothing from you. It’s insulting because you put in all this work and they can’t be bothered.”

Her son Erik Hultgren of Brimfield could not be reached after multiple attempts.

Although life is bleak, there are times when there is some sunshine. When that happens she wants to extend the kindness by “paying it forward.”

“My friend once gave me two bags of groceries when I couldn’t get to the social services on time for lunch. Can you believe that? The next day, I go to the social services and a man there was upset that someone stole his sleeping bag. I went the next day to get a sleeping bag from the rescue mission for him, because it was terrible that someone stole from him the only thing he has.”

She thinks if everyone made such efforts, fewer people would struggle.

“There are so many people sleeping in the park or on benches … I could not believe. But if we do not help each other we will not progress.”

During her lecture at the art gallery, Hultgren pauses to catch her breath and find her place in the slide show. Her specialty is paleolithic to the end of the Medieval period, but she admits that her skills are diminishing.

“It takes me longer now to do things. My left eye has cataracts, so I can barely see. What took me two hours now takes me two days, this Power Point (presentation), I did in about five.”

The presentation is 111 slides long.

Near the end of the hour-long discussion, the crowd begins to get restless. A man gets up, goes to the the back of the room where the gallery manager stands a donation box, which contains the money Hultgren will get for her lecture.

The man puts some money into the box, gets a cup of cranberry juice and goes back to his seat.

Hultgren got $11 for the lecture.

German-born retired professor ‘struggling to live’ by The News Outlet

Click here to download “German-born retired professor ‘struggling to live’” (MP3)

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator (Youngstown), The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Caitlin Fitch is a senior at Youngstown State University, majoring in journalism and pursing a minor in professional writing and editing. She left her hometown of Elmira, N.Y., to pursue her passion for writing and reporting. She was attracted to journalism because she likes to be informed on all subjects. She enjoys talking with people, finding out their stories and sharing them with others. One of her favorites involved the popularity of bingo in the Mahoning Valley.

By CAITLIN COOK
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

Alexander Zetts wasn’t sure if he would ever see his children again. Or, if they even wanted to see him again.

He had left his family in 1993 because he and his wife weren’t getting along. He fell into a relentless cycle of alcohol and drug abuse.

Then, in 2003, he learned that his eldest daughter lived near his friend’s home in Campbell. One day, he visited that friend. He walked toward a group of children who were playing and sat across the street. And waited.

When he saw his daughter, he didn’t know what to expect. But he knew what he wanted – his life back.

He saw his daughter point him out to a friend, who then walked through the crowd and asked if his name was Al Zetts. He responded loud enough for his daughter to hear, “Yes. Ask her if her name is Shortcake?”

That is how he started to build a future from the pieces of his broken past.

Now, he spends most of his days and nearly all of his nights on one of the many cots with matching green blankets at the Mahoning Valley Rescue Mission. Zetts, who has battled an addiction to alcohol and crack for 20 years of his life, has an image of what he believes normal life is and that’s what he wants.

The 53 year-old, haggard man recalls the 10-year stint when he had a wife, a job, a family and purpose. The mission on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard has been home to him for nearly 30 years.

“It’s the rock I stand on. It’s a good place,” Zetts said.

Before drugs captivated his days, Zetts worked in the auto industry. He never made a lot of money, but he was able to find enough work to support his family.

He worked at Michigan Hanger Co. of Niles in 1987 as a metal handler for a year and a half. Later, he performed bodywork as needed at various shops for more than 10 years. Zetts also worked at Bart Farms in 1988 for a few months preparing turkeys for Thanksgiving.

“Looking out for my family was my reward. It was fun going to work every day and breaking your back and coming home.”

After leaving his family, he found his need to work decreasing and his need for alcohol and drugs increasing. The last job he had was at a gas station in 2005.

“I just started picking up the alcohol again and smoking crack and taking any drug that I could possibly get to drown the pain and the anger from me leaving my family.”

For two years, he received General Relief checks of $100 a month. He now receives $200 a month in Food Stamps, which he says is enough. At the mission, he finds himself in a giving atmosphere where everyone is looking out for everyone else. To him, the process of coming in broken and working toward a better person is beautiful.

His children are now 29, 28, 23 and 21. Zetts spoke with his wife for the first time in 20 years at their daughter’s house in 2010. It was a simple conversation about the children and that was it, Zetts said.

He visits his daughter every month. His eldest son, who lives in Cleveland, travels to Youngstown to visit his father about every five to six months. Neither visit him at the mission. He still hopes to connect with his two youngest children.

His daughter, who asked that her name not be revealed, didn’t want to talk publicly about her father.

Tony Sylvester, supervisor of men’s services, at the mission believes Zetts’ developing relationships with his children are aiding his recovery. Zetts said the last time he smoked crack was a brief relapse in 2007 and before that 2003.

“She (his oldest daughter) said she didn’t want to lose me again,” Zetts recalled. “Be (a) dad. We’re around, we’re OK, we all want to see you.”

Because of this and the mission, Zetts doesn’t see himself as being poor.

The mission tailors a plan according to clients’ needs. Zetts is in transition and on the waiting list for housing. Sylvester said Zetts has had his ups and downs over the years, but is a pretty good guy.

“He has gone through different phases that I’ve seen personally. At first, he was very secretive on some of his thoughts and actions. This time around it seems like he has come around to realize he has to straighten out his life.”

For the first time, in April, Zetts started attending counseling at Turning Point. He said counseling provides him a chance to open up and express himself. The mission views this as an intrinsic part of Zetts’ recovery.

In the meantime, he helps with various chores, such as cooking or waxing floors, at the mission. He also tries to help others.
“I’m looking at their youth, I’m looking at where that could have been me and now it’s too late,” Zetts said. “I try and help out in the manner of where people are lost the same way I was, down and out on their luck – nothing to look forward to.”

For Zetts, that’s what the mission is about, coming in broken and having a support system to help move forward. He wouldn’t leave the mission if he had his way. He loves the building and believes in the overall goal.

“He wants to be seen as somebody who is a good person, which is difficult for him at times because of his past and history,” Sylvester said. “He has to get past a lot of stuff we’ve seen in him all these years.”

Zetts said the mission gave him a second chance at life and he is wary of leaving the mission for an apartment operated by Meridian Services.

Sylvester believes the move will be positive for Zetts, but there may be some setbacks along the way. However, he isn’t sure if Zetts will ever again be able to earn a living. His right arm has 35 breaks in it, caused from fighting. The injuries limit his ability to perform manual labor.

“That is difficult to say right now, his age is defiantly a factor,” he said.

He is cognitive of the high and numbness drugs gave him as he talks about living with residents in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous.

“I’m balancing the scales. It’s too easy to fall backwards,” Zetts said.

“Once you start drinking and getting high you forget the concept of what you’re actually trying to accomplish for your future. You wind up hurt.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, University of Akron and professional media outlets including WYSU-FM Radio and The Vindicator, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Caitlin Cook, 22, is majoring in journalism and philosophy at Youngstown State University. She hails from Charleston, W.Va., where she graduated from Capital High School in 2007. At YSU, she is a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving Team. Much like a swimmer in water, she feels natural and complete when writing and pursuing new journalistic endeavors.

German-born retired professor ‘struggling to live’ by The News Outlet

Click here to download “German-born retired professor ‘struggling to live’” (MP3)

German born Hultgren immigrated to the states when she was 24. She and her husband decided to live the American dream.

“I came direct to Ohio. I met my husband at the university in Germany and so when he came back to America he wanted me to come over”

Hultgren was married for 20-years and raised three children. And she worked as a part-time instructor at Kent State University, retired five years ago and went back to work to make ends meet. But then last January the unexpected happened.

“The director came up to me and said “Heidy we don’t have any money for you anymore, TA’s have to teach the courses, it’s as simple as that.”

The Art department at Kent State said part time faculty is hired as needed, and that Hultgren wasn’t fired, she just wasn’t renewed.

Since then Hultgren struggles to get by.

She tries to make extra money by giving art lectures but she doesn’t always do so well. She only made eleven dollars for One lecture at the FLJKluth Art Galley.

NAT SOUND HER LECTURE

Christy Anderson, is the Director of Kent Social Services. She’s been working there since 1979 and says these past two years are the worst she’s seen and Hultgrens case is not unusual.

“Certainly there are others like her who were employed and never imagined they’d be in a situation where they’d be getting free meals by no means is she an exception in that regard.”

Anderson says frustration turns to hopelessness

“I know that there are people like Heidy who feel like they’re doing everything right and everything they possibly can and the economic situation is just so difficult right now and they’re almost developing a sense of despair not knowing where they can turn because they’re doing everything they can to help themselves.”

Hultgren receives 14-hundred dollars per month from a retired teachers fund. Her monthly expenses include a $600 mortgage payment, $400 car payment, and $150 in utilities. At the end of the month Hultgren is left with only 100 dollars.

“It doesn’t work so well because I have to pay everything, especially gas I have a gas furnace and I’m already horrified about how much that will cost me because the house is from the 1920s.”

Hultgren lives close to Kent Social Services and relies on the agency for food.

“Only thing I have is that I do eat once a day, I eat one meal.”

Health problems like diabetes have also contributed to Hulgrens financial problems.

“Well right now my retena is damaged so I actually can’t see or read only from my left eye. All the traffic signs half of them are gone. I just got a bill for $159 from that..l The one from the blood sugar I don’t know yet, I was already five times in debt.”

The 70 year-old Hultgren visits the hospital frequently.

“I don’t like to be one of those lab rats yes”

Hultgren predicts she’ll die within five years.

“Most likely I’ll be dead I will be cremated and my ashes will be spread.”

For the News Outlet…I’m Caitlin Fitch

ACTION TO CLEAN UP MAHONING SLOWS TO A TRICKLE

By CAITLIN COOK
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

External Link: Details of the Environmental Dredging Reconnaissance Study (click here)

Luis Velazquez tosses his fishing line in the Mahoning River in waters that maintain an easy flow downstream before falling over a small dam just beyond his cast.

Download as PDF: Mahoning River Project

The Mahoning River Environmental Dredging Reconnaissance Study addresses problems and opportunities for ecosystem restoration related to contaminated sediments in the lower Mahoning River, located in northeastern Ohio.

On the river’s banks, oil residue creates a thin silhouette where the water meets land.

It’s the Mahoning — what former Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams tags as the “most grossly underused” physical asset in the Mahoning Valley.

The river has been so contaminated that in 1988, the Ohio Department of Health warned against contact with sediments and fish consumption along the lower 28 miles of the river, which includes the area flowing through Youngstown. It’s most often waist-high but can get up to 12 feet deep, and it’s seldom wider than a good stone’s throw.

Velazquez, 30, a native West Sider, has heard stories all his life of pollutants lurking below the waters he has fished for 10 years and camped along as a child.

He said he is not deterred and will continue fishing the waters.

But he never eats the fish.

Watch video of YSU team testing river water

Many at YSU study waterway in depth

By Caitlin Cook
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

Without hesitating, Lauren Schroeder trudges into the Mahoning River with this warning: What was seeping into his weathered, once-white tennis shoes is “nasty stuff.”

Knee high in water, with a fishermen’s hat atop his head, Schroeder, a retired professor of evolution and ecology at Youngstown State University, said he has been monitoring the river’s water for decades.

“In the 1960s, there was an environmental movement that was just awakening and a big press for environmental organizations, environmental studies and cleaning up the environment. I got caught up in that,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder and several of his YSU colleagues have spent decades studying the polluted river and trying to develop solutions for it.

More than 30 years after Schroeder’s work with the river began, however, the Mahoning remains highly polluted despite collaborative efforts from river cleanup enthusiasts.

In studies performed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, significant levels of toxic chemicals were found in the sediment, including heavy metals such as lead, zinc, copper, iron, cadmium, chromium and organic toxins.

“The heavy metals generally are not toxic to humans by contact. But they enter the food chain, thereby adversely affecting the biotic life of the river,” Schroeder said. “Bottom-feeding fish like carp and bullheads take up and concentrate the metals in their tissues. Eating these contaminated fish could cause adverse effects in humans.”

In a study designed by Schroeder, YSU researchers want to identify unique algae organisms called diatoms — thinking that they could help identify the river’s most-polluted areas.

Diatoms reflect the quality of the environment in which they live. The sea shell-like diatoms naturally secrete a cell wall that is like glass, which acts as a barrier and allows diatoms to preserve themselves, Schroeder said. There are more than 300 types of diatoms found throughout the Mahoning.

“Each one has a particular set of environmental conditions where it grows the best in, and these conditions are different for each of these diatoms. So, if we go look at the diatoms that are present and we know what conditions they prefer, we can judge the quality of the river based on the computation of these diatom communities,” Schroeder said.

Scott Martin, chairman of YSU’s civil engineering department, said many at the university have been attracted to studying the river.

Martin first became involved with the river watershed basin more than 27 years ago. He and a graduate student work with Schroeder’s research to prioritize dams for removal in an effort to restore the river’s natural flow.

“That decision will ultimately be made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, who would need to provide permits for any dam removal,” Martin said.

In the YSU biology department, Carl Johnston is working on sediment remediation. The study looks to identify the indigenous bacteria that live within the contaminated sediment and apply what they learn to a cleanup.

“Once we work with the organisms, we may be able to add either oxygen or some other nutrient or amendments that will stimulate the native bacteria,” he said.

Johnston said much testing will be needed to find the best way of treating different parts of the river because of the differences in pollution levels and types.

A river that was choked by pollutants for decades remains even further strangled by multigovernment finger-pointing. Millions of dollars have been spent on suggestions. Little has been spent on action, however.

Despite years of conversation and study and promises of funding and support, the Mahoning is no closer to clean today than it was 30 years ago when companies stopped dumping pollutants into the tributary.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted a $500,000 study in 1999 and determined that regardless of how much the water quality improves over the years, the Mahoning cannot be deemed restored until the miles of contaminated sediments are addressed.

Bill DeCicco spent much of his 20-year public career as the leader of CASTLO, the economic development agency for Poland Township and the cities of Campbell, Struthers, Lowellville and Coitsville. He always thought the river would be cleansed in his lifetime.

“If you were here in 2005 and said, ‘Bill, well what do you think about cleaning up the Mahoning River?’ I’d say, ‘Well 2005, we finish up this study and by 2017, 2020 at the latest, we’ll have a clean river.’”

STEEL’S LEGACY

The nine major steel mills along the Mahoning were Republic Steel Corp. Warren plant; Republic Steel Niles plant; U.S. Steel Corp. McDonald Works; Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co’s Brier Hill Works; U.S. Steel Corp. Ohio Works; Republic Steel Corp., Youngstown; Youngstown Sheet & Tube Campbell Works; and Sharon Steel Corp., Lowellville.

The U.S. EPA reported that the average net discharge from those nine steel plants exceeded 400,000 pounds per day of suspended solids, 70,000 pounds per day of oil and grease, 9,000 pounds per day of ammonia-nitrogen, 500 pounds per day of cyanide, 600 pounds per day of phenolics and 800 pounds per day of zinc.

For perspective, the million-gallon Monongahela River Ashland oil spill of 1988 was characterized as one of the most severe inland oil spills in the nation’s history, that same report said.

By comparison, however, the much smaller Mahoning River chronically received the equivalent of more than four Ashland oil spills every year for decades.

The contamination stems from years of long-idled steel and other industrial companies dumping waste into the river and using the water from the river to cool products they manufactured.

Although steel companies have long since shuttered their operations in the Valley, the toxic remnants they left have survived.

A $3.5 million Corps feasibility report explored methods to extract contaminated sediments. The report called for dredging 750,000 cubic yards of in-river and riverbank contamination, and for the removal of seven small dams.

Some experts believe the dams hold the river hostage to years of industry. The suggested dredging, along with the removal of dams, will restore the river to its natural free-flowing course, according to the Corps report.

Mike Settles of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said the Mahoning was most recently studied from 2006 to 2007 along the upper region upstream from the Leavittsburg dam in Trumbull County. The lower Mahoning was studied in the 1980s and 1990s. A new study will be conducted next year.

WHO PAYS?

Cleanup has been stalled in Phase 2 of a feasibility study by the Corps.

Eastgate Regional Council of Governments became involved as the community sponsor in the Corps’ study. Rachel McCartney of Eastgate says the river falls under the jurisdiction of the Corps, and that is where the cleanup funds initially were going to originate.

“Involving a federal agency, such as the Corps, has its positive and negative sides. Of course, we are now experiencing the negative side — a stalled project,” McCartney said.

Officials offer varying explanations for the delay:

Disagreements about the proper approach to development.

Weak environmental laws.

Timid political leadership.

People unwilling to demand action.

The major stumbling block, however, is determining who should pay for the project with an estimated cost of $150 million.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, said the factories that polluted the river, including many now-defunct steel companies, are legally responsible to pay. He said it is unlikely to be able to collect from them or from the companies that took over their former locations.

U.S. Steel, with headquarters in Pittsburgh, is the only company still in existence that once operated along the river.

“I would think it’d be highly improbable, if not impossible, for the local communities to go after these polluters. This is a federal issue,” Williams said.

In an interview while he was still mayor, Williams listed the cleanup of the river among the top 10 priorities for the city, but realized that little or nothing is happening to advance the effort.

Williams, who is now director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, isn’t sure if the river will ever be clean enough for recreation.

“I’m always hopeful,” he said. “But it is a difficult and tedious process.”

WHO SHOULD DO IT?

Youngstown Mayor Charles Sammarone, who has been involved in city government for 28 years, said he is no longer optimistic about chances for a cleanup.

“It’s been talked about for almost 40 years,” Sammarone said. “Everyone is in favor of doing it. It’s just how do you fund it?”

Williams said the problem is that no one appears to be leading the cleanup effort despite the fact that several organizations are chartered for such a purpose and people draw paychecks for the work.

Daniel Mamula, who was hired in 2009 as the manager of the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative, said he believes the Corps is supposed to be coordinating and leading the effort to find funding.

Carmen Rozzi, the initial project manager for the Corps, says that’s not his agency’s job.

Instead, he says it is up to Congress to decide if it wants to allocate funding for the project.

“For federal involvement, a federal agency needs two acts of Congress in order to accomplish anything,” Rozzi said. “Any federal agency needs authority to accomplish the mission then must seek the appropriations.”

Rozzi recently helped craft new legislation for Congress that he hopes will help give their efforts a stronger bite.

Mamula said his agency is working to lure companies to locate businesses along the river. Since the initiation of the corridor initiative, using grants from the Clean Ohio Fund and the Federal Brownfields Program, 450 acres of brownfield sites are either remediated or under the process of being cleaned. Of that, 125 acres of brownfields meet commercial or industrial standards in the various communities along the Mahoning River.

“We want to do this as business development as well as recreational and environmental. Trying to keep that balance is really tough because the pressure is on for jobs and business,” Mamula said.

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Lori Jordan, 43, of Austintown doesn’t fish the Mahoning but enjoys the tranquility she finds along its banks.

“If they were to clean up the river, it would at least give people some positivity and hope,” Jordan said.

The last studies, performed in 1996 by the Ohio EPA, found high levels of toxic chemicals such as lead, zinc, copper, iron, cadmium, chromium and organic toxins.

Mamula is skeptical the river ever will be fully clean but believes sections will be addressed.

Mamula acknowledged Trumbull County is naturally ahead of recreational development with Packard and Perkins parks, in addition to bike trails and easy river access. He would like recreation development near the Covelli Center, such as a bike path.

Despite the contact ban, Mamula said he does not understand why the river cannot be used for casual recreation now. “People are using the river more and more,” Mamula said.

Williams, however, said he would hate to see too much time or money spent on developing recreational areas until the water is deemed safe.

“The concern would be, we’d locate businesses right there on the banks, and the business says, ‘Hey, it’s fine; it’s great.’ Then three years later, we get this project rolling. All of the sudden, that land needs to be a staging area for the equipment or for the material that’s dredged, and now we’ve got a business in an area that doesn’t make sense for cleaning the river.”

Sammarone, however, said he welcomes business along the banks of the Mahoning.

“You come in here with a business, we’ll bend over backwards to get you here,” he said.

OPINIONS RUN DEEP

Such disparity in opinions is common in this debate.

One person or organization wants to move one direction; another has a different vision. N othing happens.

Several groups and projects continue to push the cleanup and are receiving local and federal funding as well as private donations to sustain work related to the Mahoning River.

For instance, the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative received an $80,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Development to study establishing “a regional urban economical development and brownfield revitalization plan.”

Other organizations that spend time or money working on development or cleanup of the river are the Mahoning River Consortium, Mahoning River of Opportunity, Mahoning River Corridor Mayors’ Association, Eastgate, CASTLO, and Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber.

Rozzi said it’s doubtful the river will be cleaned if the funds cannot be allocated for the proposed $150 million cleanup project.

The Department of Justice, however, was successful in providing the Ohio EPA with about $8.4 million — $2.9 million from LTV and $5.5 million from Copperweld — from their settlements with those steel companies. The funds can be used for cleanup projects along the Mahoning.

“There’s been no indication that this money must be used by a certain date or it disappears or will be dedicated to something else,” said Settles of the Ohio EPA.

Rozzi said there is nothing the Corps can do right now, however.

“We don’t have the authorization to do anything on the Mahoning River,” he said. “This is a challenging period for us authorization- wise.

“The determination has to be made how do you dredge, where do you dredge, what do you do with the sediment and where is the money going to come from?”

Those are the questions no one can still answer.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, Akron Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio in Akron.

Caitlin Cook, 22, is majoring in journalism and philosophy at Youngstown State University. She hails from Charleston, W.Va., where she graduated from Capital High School in 2007. At YSU, she is a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving Team. Much like a swimmer in water, she feels natural and complete when writing and pursuing new journalistic endeavors.

Houses of worship use innovation to battle losses in members, income

By JOEL ANDERSON
TheNewsOutlet.org

Nothing is safe during a recession. Not even the house of God.

Coupling a down economy with a falling population has been a struggle for many — but not all — Mahoning Valley churches.

“What we’ve noticed is that given the economic times we live in — and the place we live in — that our giving, at least our Sunday offertory, has been kind of flat,” said the Rev. John Jerek, vicar for clergy at the Diocese of Youngstown.

“It hasn’t really increased, certainly not the way it would have probably 10 years ago,” Father Jerek added.

From 2008 to 2010, St. Luke Roman Catholic Church in Boardman has seen a steep drop in offerings. In September 2008, the church brought in nearly $53,000. In 2010, the sum dropped to $40,000.

It’s a Valley problem, but it’s also a national issue, said Sharon Kent, the office manager for St. Luke’s.

“Our frustration with the changing times is also shared with many churches in the Diocese of Youngstown and across the United States,” she said.

There is one religion that doesn’t have to worry about tithing and offerings.

Those practicing the Jewish faith are required to pay dues in order to be part of a synagogue. The Congregation Rodef Sholom website lists a yearly family membership at $875 and a single membership at $504. These can be paid yearly or in installments. The synagogue is in Youngstown.

This isn’t a financial model that appeals to other churches, however.

“If I were to suggest this to the pastor, he would throw me out of the church,” Kent said.

A recent Faith Communities Today survey measured many aspects of church health. The study was the work of David A. Roozen, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, Hartford, Conn.

The results showed mainstream church populations are growing older, are not appealing to young people, their offerings are on the decline and are less healthy than minority churches.

According to FACT, 80 percent of American congregations were hurt by the recession. From 2008 to 2010, nearly 9 percent annually had some kind of financial troubles. That compares with the 2000 to 2005 results, which showed a decrease of 4 percent annually.

Kent sees this decline in her church, too. “This is “being discussed at practically every meeting,” she said.

Holy Family Parish in Poland said its offerings haven’t been affected by the recession, however. Susan Bradshaw, Holy Family Parish’s bookkeeper, said the church has been doing rather well.

“Our numbers have only gone down 1.16 percent between 2009 and 2010,” she said.

The survey also says the number of congregations trying innovative worship services increased, but the effort had little effect. To be more contemporary, praise bands were introduced to many congregations.

Black churches have seen similar patterns that are reflected in the survey. At Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church on Youngstown’s South Side, the Rev. C. Shawn Tyson said his giving at the church has been on an increase.

“Our church offerings have been within the 5 percent range of where they were before the recession hit,” he said. The Rev. Mr. Tyson said he was shocked to see such stability in the Valley when it was not the reality in his former city of Indianapolis. 

“I used to be a preacher in Indianapolis, and that church was on a downturn between 2008 and 2009. I was surprised to see things on an upswing in Youngstown,” he said.

The Rev. Kenneth Simon, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church on the South Side, has seen similar patterns.

“Our offerings have stayed the same. There’s been a slight decrease with the economy, but our members are still able to give,” the Rev. Mr. Simon added.

While it may seem odd to see a rock band in a church, Jeff Crouse, musical director at Common Ground Community Church in North Lima, said that shouldn’t be the case.

“We play some contemporary music, but we also play the older hymns – but we give them a different feel. And we haven’t had much resistance from the older members,” he said.

Crouse said his church also uses programs, such as Goodness Grows, to help encourage more church involvement.

“Common Ground was built [on the site of the former] Mellinger’s Nursery and we kept the greenhouses. So now we teach urban kids how to grow food.”

Kent says another way to fill pews and plates is by listening.

“We’re really trying to bring in some of the high school- and college-age kids. We listen to their concerns and what they would like changed in the church,” she said. “It’s not all about the money. It’s the journey through life.”

Fewer people are on that journey, however.

The second-largest and fastest-growing affiliation is called the “nones.” This group, which responded as having no affiliation, is impacting all churches including the No. 1 affiliation, the Roman Catholic Church.

According to the study, the average membership in a congregation dropped from 130 to 108 during the decade. In 2000, average attendance was 42.2 percent. In 2010, that number rose to 48.9 percent.

Carolyn Funk, financial secretary at First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown, said her church reflects this trend, with about 80 people per Sunday, many of them older.

“When I started coming to this church 10 years ago, there were four little old women who sat in the fourth pew from the front. Now they’re all gone,” she said. “We only have one child in the church now.”

View the survey at www.faithcommunitiestoday.org.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, Akron Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio in Akron.

Joel Anderson plans to graduate in 2011 from Youngstown State University. He hopes to combine his love for music and his passion for journalism into a career as a music journalist. He has published several arts and entertainment articles for The Jambar, the student-run newspaper at YSU. Listeners also may be familiar with his radio reports on WYSU. His home is East Liverpool.

YOUNGSTOWN

Ken Stanislaw and fellow members of Lansingville Block Watch, the oldest such group in the city, call one another monthly on telephone land lines to organize meetings and stay informed.

Stanislaw, its president, just learned how to use a speakerphone and recently accomplished his first three-way call.

So don’t expect his group of 10 or so — mostly senior citizens — to use email, Facebook or Twitter anytime soon.

But Lansingville is an exception. Youngstown’s block watches and neighborhood groups are beginning to flourish — growing from 10 or so a couple years ago to more than 45 now. And social media is fueling much of the neighborly connections and activism, with eight using Facebook.

Debra Weaver, member of the Wick Park Neighborhood Association and creator of Youngstown’s Grey to Green Festival, says social networks are key tools for neighborhood action.

“We use Facebook and Twitter for basically any activities or meetings. It’s fabulous. I can’t even imagine trying to organize without it at this point,” Weaver said.

One message on the Wick Facebook page reads, “Okay. Who’s up for some late-evening walks in the newly brightened Wick Park this week or next week? I’m thinking about 8:30 or 9 p.m., just after dusk. Let’s get a group of at least five people together. Who’s in?”

By 12:25 p.m. that day, the post already had 14 comments underneath, all from interested participants.

Phil Kidd, a community organizer at Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, works with the Youngstown-area watch groups. He said about eight neighborhood groups actively use Facebook.

The MVOC Facebook page currently has 371 likes, and its page was created in September 2009. The Wick Park Neighborhood Association’s Facebook page started in March and has 111 likes.

The 7th Ward Citizens Coalition’s Facebook page was created this August and has 132 members.

Treez Please has 170 members on Facebook; it began in May 2009.

If there is a local king of social media organizing, it is Kidd. He created the civic-minded Defend Youngstown movement six years ago, which soon found a niche on a website and on Facebook.

His Defend Youngstown Facebook page, created this July, has 5,478 likes. But it had the instant benefit of his years of personal networking. He also uses his personal Facebook page and the MVOC web page.

Kidd also assists block- watch groups in producing video content and posting each video on YouTube. He recently posted a video for the Handel’s neighborhood group and the 7th Ward Citizens Coalition.

Kidd said blogs work well, too. They allow members to communicate with other groups and post meeting dates, meeting minutes and links.

“They serve the purpose of what a block watch actually needs. Groups are now able to network across the city,” he said.

Adam Earnheardt, associate professor of communication studies at Youngstown State University and author of “The Modern Communicator,” said social-networking sites are more “geographical and will have more success because they open up so many community channels.”

He added these sites provide users with a “virtue of interest in the same thing.”

One of Weaver’s big interests is the Grey to Green Festival. Weaver used Facebook to inform others of the festival’s new focus and goals for this year’s September event.

“This years’ festival emphasizes climate change and the devastating impact of global warming as we focus on making personal commitments to reduce our carbon footprint,” she posted.

Around the city, Facebook and Twitter are used to organize park cleanups, missing dog searches, house move-ins, raffle tickets and local fundraisers.

Kidd believes these ideas are in their infancy and will grow.

But some groups will hold onto their phone trees — as with Lansingville.

Stanislaw and members of the Lansingville block watch meet once a month at St. Matthias Church on Cornell Street. He does not expect to see Facebook in the near future.

“Most [group members] don’t have computers so that [idea] is out. I myself don’t use the computer as often or as much as I would like,” Stanislaw said.

Despite the tech gap, Lansingville meeting topics usually consist of crime concerns — just like their digital cousins.

“It’s usually about who did what, speeding on Cooper Street,” Stanislaw said. “And we have a resident prostitute. She is talked about a lot.”

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, Akron Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio in Akron.

Kacy Standohar is a junior at Youngstown State University, where she is majoring in journalism. Besides being an intern at the News Outlet, she is the features editor at The Jambar, the student-run newspaper, and a majorette. She is a member of the Society for Collegiate Journalists. Her favorite article was on YSU’s decision not to renovate Wick-Pollock House. Her favorite news sources are The Jambar, Yahoo News and CNN.com. She hopes to write for a newspaper or magazine upon graduation.

By Adrienne Bish
TheNewsOutlet.org

Occupy Wall Street continues to draw a big crowd in New York and other cities. But here in Youngstown, it’s a different story.

The number of people involved in Occupy Youngstown varies from day to day. However, you can count them on one hand.

The message they want to get across is mixed.

One protestor, who didn’t want to be identified, says he just want to create awareness.

“We’re trying to get more people realizing what’s going on in the country. And from there we can start making changes, but if no one knows what’s going on, no one can make changes.)”

Jarrod Badgett, another member, says poverty is the real issue.

“ The main thing is just to get people to kind of focus on why the economy did what it did back in 2008 and what it’s been doing since then. And just to let people know that this financialized economy is the reason that we have these rising poverty numbers.

Rebecca Vulcan said she’s unhappy with the economic distribution.

“For me it’s about the injustice, the economic injustice in the world. And just the fact that so few of the citizens of America are holding so much of the wealth.”

The Oakland protest has erupted in chaos while peaceful demonstrations continue in many other cities.

The Occupy Wall Street protest began in mid September. A poll from the Opinion Research Corp. says 36 percent of Americans say they agree with the overall position of Occupy Wall Street, while 19 percent say they disagree.

The Youngstown protest is set to end Nov. 8.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration between the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, The University of Akron and professional media outlets including, The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Few demonstrate in downtown Youngstown by The News Outlet

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News Outlet reporter Doug Livingston looks at the reasons for the disparity.

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By Loren Thomas
The NewsOutlet

Mary Lou Dodson’s interest in school issues started years ago when her daughter was a freshman in high school and taking a science course that had no permanent teacher for six weeks.

Dodson attended a school board meeting to raise concerns. And by the end of the meeting, she decided that she could make a difference as a member of the board.

That was 31 years ago and today, after years of politics and debates, Dodson is now president of the Springfield Local School Board.

Even after all this time, Dodson said, she still feels like she can affect change and points to the construction of a high school as an example.

Dodson is among those on the front line of a challenging time for school boards in the state. Much of their time is spent managing budget shortfalls, battling dwindling enrollment and fighting for students being lured by charter and private schools.

On paper, the Ohio School Board Association says a school board member helps set educational goals and establishes policy for a school system based upon state laws and community values.

Although their regular duties are simply to attend one or two meetings a month, typically for pay of about $100 a meeting, these board members find themselves doing a lot more.

“We roll with the changes,” Dodson said. “You have to.”

Dodson said her motivation to remain on the board long after her own children have moved on is a love of public education.

But far too often, she said, much of the time is spent on financial issues.

Lisa Mansfield, a member of the Akron Board of Education, also laments the amount of time she and other board members spend on financial issues.

“Finance is a huge issue,” Mansfield said. “I wish it was an issue we didn’t have, but it’s always been there.”

She said school finances are constantly changing and a big contributing factor in Akron has been the growth of charter schools.

“They [charter schools] have a marketing budget that they can put towards a name like ‘Hope’ and ‘Imagine,’ ” Mansfield said. “Those names can catch people’s attention.”

A bright sign, Mansfield said, is that many of the students who leave the district often return.

“What parents are then finding out is that after two or three years their child isn’t thriving in the charter school,” Mansfield said. “So then we get them back, but they are several years behind their peers and we have to catch them up.

“It’s a strange thing to compete with someone who is taking funding and children and then giving back a product that they are not keeping up with.”

At the same time the board is forced to make cuts, Mansfield said, there is pressure to meet or exceed state academic standards.

“Compared to the big eight [Cleveland, Canton, Cincinnati, Columbus, Youngstown, Dayton, Toledo and Akron] we are doing well,” Mansfield said. “We want to be compared to the rest of Summit County and the rest of Northeast Ohio, and we are making strides.”

Like Akron, one of Springfield’s big issues is declining enrollment.

“There are not a lot of jobs, so people begin to leave the district,” Dodson said.

Springfield plans to close Roosevelt Elementary as it works on the new high school.

“This [construction] is the highlight of my experience here as a school board member,” Dodson said. “It is definitely a wonderful thing that people put their trust in the school board to deliver them a good school.”

Cindy Collins, a Springfield board member since 2009, is proud that the district is bouncing back from a state-imposed “fiscal emergency.”

“We are managing to live within our means,” Collins said. “Having a bond issue on the ballot pass the first time and putting a levy on there and not having it pass five times shows what the parents and people want.’’

“People hold us responsible for what we spend,” Dodson said. “Sometimes they get a little ticked on what we don’t spend.”

A key to a successful board, Dodson and Collins agree, is being able to work together and with the superintendent.

“We all have our opinions,” Collins said. “But we listen to each other and end up making good decisions.”

Mansfield said she works to ensure everyone’s voice is heard.

“The most wonderful part about being a member is being a voice for the little people,” Mansfield said. “And those little people include the 6-foot-3 juniors and seniors all the way down to the little Head Start kids.”

For Mansfield, real success comes at graduation, whether it be in spring or fall, for those high school students who needed summer classes to graduate.

“To look out in the crowd and watch their parents cheer for them is worth every second.”

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, Kent State and the University of Akron, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Canton Repository, Rubber City Radio, WYSU radio and the Youngstown Vindicator.

Loren Thomas is a senior at Kent State University, where she is a broadcast journalism major, with a minor in business. Also, she is a member of the university’s track and field team. She has been involved in student media for three years. She has worked as a co-anchor and assistant producer. She also had an internship with WTXL-ABC 27 in Tallahassee, Fla. She is most proud of her final project in Advanced Broadcast. The story was about work-from-home Internet scams and a victim who lost $20,000.

By Bethany English 
and Julie Sickel
The NewsOutlet

Being a councilman can be a bit like a deer in the headlights. And sometimes the deer in the headlights can actually be the issue.

The question of whether to cull the herd was just one of the tough issues on the plate of Hudson Councilman-at-Large William Wooldredge, who was elected two years ago.

As area village and city residents go to the polls this week to elect representatives to council, incumbents were asked to talk about the kind of work they do — the routine and the unusual.

They balance budgets, fix highways, intervene in neighborhood disputes and deal with dogs and varmints.

Wooldredge, a longtime participant in Hudson affairs, looked at the records to make decisions about the growing deer problem.

According to police, 57 animal-related accidents were reported from Sept. 30, 2010, to the end of September this year.

The city has opted to allow bow hunting to cull the herd.

While the most recent number actually indicates a drop in crashes from a total of 60 in 2010 and 62 in 2009, Wooldredge said, residents seem to be in agreement about thinning out the population.

“My concern with [the deer] is that it’s a safety issue,” Wooldredge said.

Hank Novak, council member for the village of Richfield, said he has faced wildlife headaches of his own.

After a period of heavy rainfall in Richfield, part of a roadway eroded and the area became a driving hazard. Novak said the village could schedule roadwork only during certain times of the year because construction might disturb the sleep habits of a bat in the area.

“People are in danger, the road is falling away and we can’t fix it because we’re gonna wake up a bat,” he said. “It just sounds so ridiculous, but that’s the way government works.”

Novak, 66, said he joined the Village Council shortly after he retired as an engineering manager at a medical company.

“I thought it would be a good way to use my managing skills,” he said. “I find I don’t need my managing skills; I need patience.”

But while resident complaints and animal problems can take a front seat some of the time, most cities and villages are keeping busy with a struggle to make up for a reduction in state funds.

Less money

In Tallmadge, the city has already begun to consolidate services to save money on full-time employees and to prepare for future cuts.

The city combined its police dispatch center with the nearby city of Stow and merged its building department with Summit County. The city income tax has also been outsourced to the Regional Income Tax Agency for collection.

Robert Maguire, at-large council member, said Tallmadge council members are charged with balancing what’s best for the residents with what the city can afford.

The city recently approved an industrial rezoning on its border with Brimfield Township to accommodate a factory to be built in the township. The approval, Maguire said, came in spite of concerns from Tallmadge residents about flooding in their backyards.

The factory would bring 100 jobs to the area, he said, and City Council took steps to ensure runoff from the factory wouldn’t flood neighboring properties.

“Obviously, everybody is fighting to get jobs, jobs, jobs and, in Ohio, our primary funding source is income tax in the municipalities,” Maguire said. “The more jobs we can attract to Tallmadge, well, we share that revenue with Brimfield.”

Local officials in Hudson can afford to focus on deer because the statewide budget cuts putting other cities on edge aren’t affecting that community too much right now.

“I think we’re in a relatively good position to weather the storm we’re going through,” Wooldredge said.

In the village of Silver Lake, Jerry Budrevich, a district council member, said he thinks the village needs to be realistic in the budget battle by cutting into built-up reserve funds.

“We have this rainy day fund that we’ve built up over time when the village had a surplus,” Budrevich said. “Times are tough and now seems to be the time to use it.”

In Richfield, Novak said state cuts are coming at a time when the village owns an excess of property.

“We have hundreds of acres of land that the village owns with no money and no plans to develop it,” he said.

Novak added that any development projects the village does have planned are dependent on federal money.

“There’s strings attached and it’s just not the best plan,” he said.

Attracting businesses

Green, on the other hand, is developing its land by encouraging companies to set up shop in the city.

“Now we’re back to trying to keep businesses and bring businesses in,” Councilman Dave France said.

The city soon will add Summa and Akron General wellness centers. France said some of the residents in his ward are hesitant because the hospitals will add a lot more traffic.

“That whole corridor is going to change with those businesses coming in, but they’re bringing jobs and income tax to the city,” France said.

But the new development is also dredging up old concerns about storm water. France said he dealt with complaints about water problems when he first joined council in 1994. After completing a study about the issue, the city made some improvements and the complaints disappeared.

“And now the storm water’s back. Development has caused some issues that we didn’t notice before,” France said.

Green Councilman John “Skip” Summerville, like many other elected officials, takes the good with the bad because all their responsibilities boil down to helping others.

“I really like helping people when they have problems,” Summerville said. “When you can help your neighbors, why wouldn’t you? It feels really good.”

Budrevich of Silver Lake echoed those sentiments.

“I think everybody in the village truly cares about the village and I think it keeps everybody a little closer. It feels like a neighborhood rather than just another place to have your house,” he said.

But being a politician can bring a mixed bag of problems.

When Summerville joined council, he knew concerns about potholes and snow plowing would land at his doorstep. But he didn’t anticipate the neighborhood squabbles about boats in backyards and garbage can placement that have also found their way to him.

“I was surprised how many neighbor disputes I get called on. I get called on things like, ‘My neighbor keeps his garbage can on my side of the house and I don’t like it,’ ” Summerville said.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Canton Repository, Rubber City Radio, WYSU radio and the Youngstown Vindicator.

Bethany English is a senior magazine journalism major at Kent State University. This past summer, she interned as a features reporter with The Columbus Dispatch. She has also written for The Daily Kent Stater, Kent State University’s newspaper and Artemis, a women’s issues magazine. Of the stories she’s written, she is most proud of her story about the inequity of male and female professors at Kent State and the research the university is conducting to lessen the gap. She gets her news from online news sites such as The Washington Post and The New York Times for national news or The Record Courier for local news.

Julie Sickel is a senior news major at Kent State University. In addition to interning with the News Outlet, she is currently the city editor for the Daily Kent Stater and the managing editor of Fusion Magazine. She came to Kent State from Plaistow, N.H. to be a scholarship member of the field hockey team, but left before her senior season to focus on journalism. She hopes to pursue a career in investigative or public affairs reporting. The story she is most proud of is her three-month investigation of the process by which the Kent State Board of Trustees awards the university president his annual performance bonus.

It was the middle of July and 7 inches of rain had fallen in Coventry Township within 24 hours.

As the waters rose, streets, cars and houses were quickly flooded.

So was Tom Seese’s phone.

As a Coventry Township trustee — a part-time job that pays $11,318 — Seese was deluged with angry calls as rushing water cracked an apartment foundation, forcing an evacuation, and homeowners watched in horror as garages and basements filled.

It was the “100 Year Rain,” and Seese was expected to do something about it.

Welcome to the job of township trustee.

Scores of people in the 
Akron-Canton area are on Tuesday’s ballot seeking the job, and voters will decide whom they want most to handle the affairs of one of Ohio’s most basic governmental units.

The challenges — and expectations — are often surprising.

In rural Hiram, Steve Pancost, who makes $11,318 each year, said his job as a trustee is to work for the good of the community and to keep it moving forward.

Trustees hire and fire workers and worry about life-and-death response times for EMS, firefighters and police. Meanwhile, they fight snow and field calls about potholes.

Pancost and Seese say they do it because they receive satisfaction from helping people directly. Other trustees said the same.

They said that trustees are the middlemen between the citizens and higher levels of government.

Seese said that after the flood, he was on the phone to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to get funding to move the water out of the affected areas.

But moving water from one area raised the risk of creating floods elsewhere, Seese said. At each turn, there was another challenge. Now, Seese is looking into grants and federal money to help compensate the residents for damage the flood has caused.

Pancost said one of his biggest issues this year is citizen concern over Hiram College wanting the village to annex about 80 acres for development. That was a reason he ran for office, and he believes it is his responsibility to keep citizens aware of the project.

“I wanted to be on the front of that opposition. The community wants a say in what is going to happen to that piece of property,” he said.

Pancost, a life resident of Hiram, said he feels like he is making a difference in securing the township’s rural lifestyle.

“You want to see things stay the way they were when you were a kid,” he said.

Pancost was recently successful in securing almost $50,000 in grants through the Northeast Ohio Public Energy Council that he hopes will help save on township energy costs. With that money, the township purchased a $10,000 thermal imaging camera for the fire department and performed about $35,000 worth of improvements to two township buildings.

Nancy Vines, a Shalersville Township trustee, said she is proud of her Portage County community, and that’s why she ran for trustee.

Vines said much of her work pertains to maintaining the 24 miles of township roads and working with the schools.

The township purchased a vacant Crestwood school building and transformed it into two separate entities.

“We have a Portage County school at one end and a day care at the other end, so by sharing utility costs, we were able to keep the school in our community rather than it being sold and used for something else,” Vines said.

The possibility that horizontal deep-well gas drilling, known as hydraulic fracking, will come to Shalersville is another issue, she said. There are residents for and against it.

The township, meanwhile, needs to protect the roads the heavy equipment would use and might require drillers to post bonds to protect the roads, she said.

Always on call

For trustees, work often continues after business hours. Trustees still answer email and phone calls at home. Most of them have their cell phone or home phone number available to the public.

Becky Corbett, a trustee from Bath, said that even when she is on vacation, she participates in the town meetings via Skype (a live Internet video messaging website) or by telephone.

Seese said he gets at least one call every week and most of these calls are complaints. He said the calls can fluctuate with the weather, too. Residents want to know when the snowplow is coming past their house.

Pancost feels it’s important to remain in contact with the people he serves. He frequently seeks feedback from citizens about community projects.

“I like to believe my phone is always available for anyone to call me for anything,” Pancost said. “I like to stay in tune with the people and talk with them to make sure they’re happy.”

Trustees are allowed to have some fun, too. Their jobs can’t be serious all the time.

Vines recalls taking her grandmother to the township-sponsored senior days. About seven or eight years ago, she brought this tradition back, and every second Monday of the month is seniors day, with dinner and bingo to follow.

“That’s one of my joys because seniors really have fun. They want to do it every week,” she said.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Canton Repository, Rubber City Radio, WYSU radio and the Youngstown Vindicator.

 
Fall Foliage by The News Outlet

Download Fall Foliage (MP3)

By Caitlin Cook
and Doug Livingston

The News Outlet

Tim Saxton enrolled in the only Advanced Placement course that Boardman High School offered when he attended in the early 1980s.

When he became principal of his alma mater in 2001, the district still offered only AP calculus. But since 2004, that has changed. Boardman’s current AP classes — seven — are on par with larger Ohio high schools.

As early as their sophomore year, Boardman students now have the opportunity to take AP courses that challenge and prepare them for college education.

Saxton is among many school officials who believe a strong AP program is essential for student success in college.

High school graduates who take advantage of AP classes can knock out college classes at a fraction of the price. Some enter college as sophomores, bypassing an entire year of school. For college admissions officers, success in AP classes indicates a student’s determination and academic achievement.

But offering AP courses isn’t an option for every school. The majority of Valley districts struggle to offer any AP option.

WHY SO FEW IN VALLEY?

Mahoning and Trumbull districts average fewer than two AP classes each. More than a third of the districts offer none. Schools that offer no AP sections are typically smaller, rural districts that lack qualified teachers and the number of students needed to fill AP classrooms.

Click here to find out what schools offer AP (Interactive Feature)

It’s an issue of staff and students, not dollars.

“Typically schools don’t see the cost of AP as being as much of a barrier as how do we find teachers that we can ensure are going to be qualified to teach college-level courses in our school,” said Trevor Packer, vice president of the College Board, the national group that oversees all AP offerings in America.

“Even though the costs of offering AP itself are not significant, if the school has a small number of students [they may have to choose], ‘Are we going to allocate a teacher to teach an AP section or a non-AP section?” Packer said.

Taxpayers ultimately fund the courses. School administrators must justify offering AP classes by filling the seats.

“When we offer an AP class, we need to have at least 15, 20, 25 kids in a class to be accountable to the community,” Saxton said. “I wish we had the luxury of having a faculty in which we could afford to teach a class and pay for someone to teach a class with 10 to 15 students. Times have changed.”

Though Boardman and other larger districts rely on numbers to fill AP sections, rural schools such as Bloomfield suffer from smaller class sizes, making it difficult to create and fill an AP class.

Bloomfield last offered AP calculus three year ago. With one student enrolled, the class was cut from the high school’s curriculum after the only certified teacher left.

The district, like others, relies on partnerships with Eastern Gateway Community College, Youngstown State University and Kent State University Trumbull Campus to build dual credit courses that outsource college credit coursework.

OHIO LACKS IN AP

Lacking AP sections isn’t just a local problem.

According to a national study conducted by ProPublica, a national reporting organization, the state overall has fallen behind.

Ohio school districts with more than 3,000 students offer seven AP classes on average. The national average for that size district is 8.35 classes.

Mahoning and Trumbull counties have six school districts with more than 3,000 students. But only two — Boardman and Warren — meet the statewide average of seven classes. Austintown offers three. Canfield, Howland and Youngstown high schools all offer two AP classes.

Canfield High School Principal John Tullio has applied for and received an advanced-placement network grant through the Ohio Department of Education. Starting next year, Tullio plans to double the school’s two AP courses with the grant funds.

“We want to stay competitive,” Tullio said. “We want to stay on top of the game and offer the best for our students. And that’s the reason for expansion.”

Of the 13 school districts with fewer than 1,000 students, only two offer AP classes.

Maplewood and Joseph Badger districts offer four and five AP classes respectively.

“One of the things we do is run very [efficiently],” said Joseph Badger Principal Edwin Baldwin.

With support from the board of education, Baldwin analyzes course offerings and class sizes, much as other districts do.

If half of the 120 high school juniors and seniors enroll in an upper-level course like psychology, then the district adds AP psychology to the curriculum and expects 15 to 20 students to register. That is the case for AP psychology this year.

“We decided we are going to give those kids every chance to get college credit and just implement the AP program,” Baldwin said.

The AP courses at Joseph Badger often replace similar honors classes. This avoids additional expenses of hiring another teacher or adding another class.

“It’s the only way that we can do it,” Baldwin said.

He also requires his AP teachers to instruct freshman courses. This lets the teachers become recruiters for prospective AP students who are encouraged to enroll in honors classes by their sophomore year. Honors classes pipeline students into AP courses.

“[Recruiting is] how we keep these courses viable and how we keep them alive,” Baldwin said.

Teachers undergo training at colleges and programs accredited by the College Board to become certified to teach AP courses. The cost of training teachers is often reimbursed by the district. Training costs, from $1,500 to $4,000, vary by institution. Some take college workshops or online training programs. Most use AP training to fulfill their obligation as educators to further their education.

COSTLY EXAMS

To gain college credit for successfully completing AP class, students must pass an $87 exam offered in May. The federal government subsidizes this fee for students who receive free or reduced lunch.

Officials are concerned some students in impoverished districts cannot afford the $87 AP final exam fee — even though it pales in comparison to hundreds of dollars in college tuition that would have been paid. Not all students who qualify for federal subsidy enroll in the free or reduced lunch program, and therefore do not receive aid for taking the AP exam.

The benefit of successfully completing an AP course depends on the college.

Tara Milliken, an admissions counselor at The Ohio State University, said accelerated courses in the AP program better prepare students for college, but they are not a primary consideration for admission.

“I think any time a student is able to take a more rigorous course. that better prepares them for the academic challenges they may face,” Milliken said. “It works in their favor.”

At YSU, an open- enrollment institution, AP classes have no bearing on admissions, according to Sue Davis, director of undergraduate admissions.

However, Davis also sees the benefit of offering college-level courses in high school.

“It gives students a little bit of an idea of what is going to be required in college,” she said, “because they will be required to do a lot more with this AP course than they would in a typical high school course.”

Boardman senior Evan Heintz embraces the options his school provides and hopes to skip a couple of courses heading into college so he’s “not so lost.”

“It’s a big advantage for Boardman students to have a lot of AP classes to choose from. It gives us a ton of options. So it gives us opportunities to succeed,” Heintz said.

Mahoning Valley lags in offering AP college classes (Audio)

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, University of Akron and professional media outlets including The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Caitlin Cook, 22, is majoring in journalism and philosophy at Youngstown State University. She hails from Charleston, W.Va., where she graduated from Capital High School in 2007. At YSU, she is a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving Team. Much like a swimmer in water, she feels natural and complete when writing and pursuing new journalistic endeavors.

Doug Livingston of Vienna brings an investigative and analytical element to the News Outlet team. His previous work, reporting on government issues, drug rehabilitation and other social issues, derives from his interest to explore the causes of poverty, crime and blight ravaging inner-city communities. He is a 2001 graduate of Mathews High School. He has studied English at Ohio State University and Columbus State Community College before returning to the Youngstown area to take up journalism at Youngstown State University.

By CHRIS COTELESSE
The NewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

Its doors are locked. Its patients have been relocated, and now a new chapter opens for the House of Hope on Illinois Avenue.

It’s being looted.

The former adult-care facility closed last month after multiple state health department inspection violations, and a court battle that came after the Nov. 11, 2010, homicide of a resident by strangulation.

Only days after the home was vacated by its owners, a series of burglaries and vandalisms began that so far has yielded seven calls to 911, three incident reports filed by police and the arrest of Michael Phillips, 47, of Youngstown, who was released the next day.

Two of the four parcels at 115 Illinois Ave. have liens held by American Tax Funding LLC. Atty. John Zamoida filed paperwork Sept. 27 to auction the property at a sheriff’s sale to recoup what Zamoida estimated as $15,000 owed to ATF. The property taxes also are delinquent at about $20,000.

Bill Sharkey has lived near the facility for seven years. He’s retired, and he brings along his dog, Huggles, when he’s scoping out the area.

“I’m just a resident … looking out for the community,” he said.

At 8:02 p.m. Oct. 4, Sharkey called police after walking past House of Hope and seeing a man walking around inside. According to police records, a unit was dispatched within a minute and the scene was cleared at 8:41 p.m.

Sharkey made a second call almost 10 hours later, reporting a shadow searching boxes on the second floor. The police arrived after 20 minutes, found Phillips on the third floor and arrested him.

Police were unable to verify the owners of House of Hope. Without a person available to file charges, police had to release Phillips because they can hold a suspect for only 48 hours.

Records on the websites of the Mahoning County auditor and recorder list the property under Center for Hope LLC. The Ohio secretary of state’s online database lists House of Hope Center LLC as the owner. Neither site lists the individuals who make up these corporations.

Lisa Lloyd, a former administrator of the House of Hope, said she co-owns the property with Michael Binder and Charlene Crissman, who operated the home with Lloyd. Binder declined to comment, and Crissman could not be reached.

Youngstown police Officer David Santangelo of the department’s scrap-metal investigations division said neither Lloyd, Binder nor Crissman have provided adequate documentation of their ownership, and YPD is investigating the matter to determine the people responsible for the property.

“We can’t hold someone in jail without a confirmed property owner to file charges,” Santangelo said.

While Phillips was at Mahoning County jail, Mark Peyko, president of the North Side Citizens’ Coalition, witnessed men stripping the house of all the metal on the outside.

“The things that are being stolen from this house are devaluing it and endangering it. There’s a progression in looting, generally. What happens is they go for the low-hanging fruit first,” Peyko said. “It opens the door for other things. … They’ll steal whatever they can out of the home.”

Peyko also is worried about the costs of repairing the home. He said the damages will deter people from buying and renovating the structure, complicating the coalition’s efforts to revitalize the North Side.

“It does frustrate it, but we are moving ahead,” Peyko said.

Santangelo’s division has made more than 300 arrests in the last five years of people stripping abandoned buildings throughout the city. He said these crimes can create a danger to neighborhoods because the perpetrators sometimes will set the buildings on fire to cover their tracks.

Peyko called 911 Emergency at 7:18 p.m., but police weren’t dispatched until 7:52.

“Calls are prioritized and dispatched in that order.” Santangelo said. “We’re working on this problem and still investigating the matter.”

Peyko called again Oct. 6 at 2:30 p.m. A unit promptly arrived three minutes later and found two vehicles and workers who told the officer they were “boarding up the property,” according to a police incident report.

Santangelo was sent to the property shortly after to investigate the calls. Three men were in the basement of one of the buildings, removing a water heater for Lisa Lloyd.

Lloyd confirmed that she asked the men to remove the water heater and secure the doors and windows.

“I have boarded up the one side of the building. I cleaned the parking lot, and I tried to board up the basement, and every time I try to go over there to board up the building, they call the police on me,” Lloyd said.

The morning of Oct. 7, police responded to another call from Peyko. Crissman was at the facility with four men, removing furniture and other items. The incident report states that Crissman was concerned that property was being stolen from the home.

Earlier this year, officials at Ohio Valley Teen Challenge on nearby Broadway Avenue donated a stove and refrigerator to the House of Hope after reading of the home’s problems in The Vindicator. Teen Challenge property manager Bruce Paulette was there with Crissman to get his stove, but the refrigerator already had been stolen.

“They just trashed the whole inside of that place,” Paulette said.

The crime lab photographed the property, and “the scene was cleared without any further action,” according to the police incident report.

The neighborhood remained quiet for a few days until Oct. 11, when two calls were made about a green Dodge pickup truck and three men inside the building. The scene was cleared twice without further action.

Sharkey said he will continue to keep an eye on the place, hoping to keep it safe.

“You wonder, at what point does this stop?” Sharkey said.

TheNewsOutlet.org is a collaboration among the Youngstown State University journalism program, Kent State University, University of Akron and professional media outlets including The Vindicator, WYSU-FM Radio, The Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio (Akron).

Chris Cotelesse, a native of Western Pennsylvania, is pursuing an undergraduate degree in journalism at Youngstown State University. When he first enrolled at YSU in 2009, he planned to pursue creative writing. However, after immersing himself in the journalism program, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Upon graduation, he hopes to work in online journalism and, eventually, start up an online interactive media site.

By Christine Keeling
ckeeling@vindy.com

Youngstown

The state says a Youngstown church must pay property taxes on its Idora parcel — again.

The Ohio Department of Taxation denied a 2007 application by Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church to have its former Idora Amusement Park parcel and the 12 surrounding properties it owns on Woodford Avenue and Pearce Avenue deemed tax-exempt.

The state’s Sept. 19 final determination mimics its Dec. 8, 2010, decision, even after the church was allowed to submit more information to support its plans.

Although the finding makes $20,590 in property taxes for those parcels that the church hasn’t paid since 2006 due immediately, and could open the door for investors interested in gaining control of the 27 acres on the city’s South side, the church says “this is the time” to start phase one of its development plan.

The Idora parcel used to house an amusement park, which was established in 1899. A 1984 fire and a decline in revenue forced it to close. Mount Calvary purchased the parcel in 1985 and initially announced plans to break ground on the Idora property in 1987 for its City of God, which was to include a nursing home, shopping plaza, counseling center, retirement home and religious education and worship facilities. The church lost the parcel in a foreclosure in 1989 and re-acquired the deed in 1994.

The church is in “denial of their lack of funding,” said James London, president of the Idora Neighborhood Association. “The 27 acres is just a bunch of dirt. There was no passion or community fun after the church took control of the property.”

London said he was pleased the state saw there was no reason for the tax-exemption, because if it had been granted, he believes it would be another 27 years before the church would do anything with the property.

“I am, truly, 150 percent ecstatic” that the tax department “came back with this decision,” London said. “It’s a win for the community.”

But Mount Calvary’s Pastor C. Shawn Tyson said he’s the “new dynamic” in the equation for the Idora property’s future.

Pastor Tyson said Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church’s previous leader, Bishop Norman Wagner, had an eye on the future when he purchased the Idora parcel.

“Wagner’s vision of the City of God was beyond his lifetime,” said Pastor Tyson. “Now, he has passed the baton to me, and I am not going to let him down.”

Bishop Wagner died in January 2010, and Pastor Tyson was installed in October 2010.

Pastor Tyson said he left Indianapolis to come to Youngstown because he believed in Bishop Wagner’s dream. Pastor Tyson said he wasn’t sure what the church’s posture was in the past, but that he was committed to meeting and collaborating with community organizations in the Idora neighborhood about the parcel’s future.

He said he was “aggressively” focusing on the first phase of a four-phase project, which would “beautify” the derelict land. The plans include walking trails, athletic track, football field and tennis courts and is set to begin in spring 2012. He said he also wants the community to have access to the property.

While he wouldn’t comment on the status of the tax-exempt denial, he did say he was optimistic a resolution would be found.

Attorneys for the church were investigating options, he said.

60 DAYS FOR APPEAL

Carrie Young, attorney examiner at the Ohio Board of Tax Appeals, said the church has 60 days to appeal the tax commission’s ruling. If it does, a hearing would be set in Columbus where the church would face a three-member board. Any further appeals would go to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Several Supreme Court cases were cited to support the tax department’s decision, which came after the department received the church’s plans.

In its tax-exempt application, the church stated it planned to build a new edifice at the location and use the property for special church events, but the Ohio Department of Taxation disagreed.

“The parcels subject to this application are not used exclusively for public worship, nor are they actively being developed for public worship with a current, tangible and funded plan,” states the finding.

“Therefore, the entire subject property fails to qualify for real property tax exemption.”

In June, the church submitted preliminary drawings and a budget summary dated Dec. 19, 2003. They featured a more than 100,000-square foot worship center projected to cost $24.2 million. It touted a bookstore, banquet facility and pew seating for 3,200, although the church puts its current membership at 900.

From aerial photography, the tax department noted, “amusement park facilities were razed, leaving only the foundation and areas of heavy vegetation on the property.” It said, the land appeared vacant, other than a softball field — and no mention of fundraising for the development was on the application or the pastor’s website.

According to Ohio law, vacant land owned by a church that is used for recreational purpose is not necessary for public worship and may not be exempted from taxation.

The attorney examiner had questions about its proposed edifice.

In an Aug. 29 faxed response, the church said it may be downsizing its plans, had not established a beginning date for construction, “planned” to have various church services at the “Idora land” and had been in contact with prospective lenders but had not secured financing.

DEALING WITH DEBT

“We are presently engaged in our church debt liquidation programs,” the church wrote, before being denied.

The debt is daunting.

In two audits, in July and August, the state auditor’s office issued findings for recovery against the church for more than $96,000 in regard to monies exchanged between itself and its now-closed charter school, Legacy Academy for the Leaders and Arts.

A 2004 audit revealed more than $30,000 in findings for similar reasons.

In 2007, the church borrowed $2.5 million in loans from America’s Christian Credit Union of California against its 1812 Oak Hill Ave. address, the Idora parcel and surrounding properties it owns.

It settled a $1.5 million claim filed by Teen Missions International of Florida, for monies it loaned for the proposed City of God.

The state’s attorney general noted a $20,000 payment by the church toward its $239,566 balance. But Mount Calvary could owe an additional $16,047 in taxes, if a new lien request filed by the attorney general is deemed valid.

Possibly in another attempt to reduce debt, the church approached the city’s planning department to discuss turning over some of its other properties it owns throughout the city to the county’s land bank which is set to begin this fall. The church owns more than 80 properties, besides the Idora parcel, and as of May owed $12,000 in delinquent real estate taxes to a lien purchaser, America Tax Funding of Florida.

The city said the title work was not complete on the properties, and Pastor Tyson said the arrangement was still in the exploratory stage.

Pastor Tyson said he wasn’t aware of the church’s financial challenges before being installed but was very involved in a debt-elimination campaign. “The goal is to be debt-free in two years,” he said.

The church, Pastor Tyson said, is asking members to make a pledge, a special gift or a sacrificial giving to help raise money. Efforts to operate the ministry more efficiently are also under way.

ON WITH DEVELOPMENT

Past due taxes on the Idora property will not impede development plans, said Pastor Tyson.

Dan Yemma, Mahoning County treasurer, said the department will assess the situation and decide the best way to collect the $20,590 due in property taxes from the church. “In this economic environment, we are willing to work with people,” he said.

The church will be required to come up with some money if a delinquent payment agreement is reached, said Yemma. The longest repayment period available is five years.

Yemma said if the church fails to honor its obligation, the department would proceed to procure the property for the county land bank.

“I think we would have interested parties right away on this property,” he said. “It’s a property we don’t want to have sitting.”

The Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation is interested in creating a plan for the parcel and met with church leaders Sept. 28 to discuss the parcel’s future.

“It was the most productive and proactive conversation that’s taken place in years,” said Presley Gillespie, executive director of YNDC. “We want to do everything we can, working with the church, community and stakeholders to restore the property to productive use.”

He said construction of a community center was mentioned during the meeting, as well as, the possibility of the development of a partnership with the land bank.

Gillespie said he’s looking for creative ways to meet the goals of the community and church, but that any solid plan needs financial and human capital behind it.

More Information:

By Alyssa Lenhoff and Timothy Francisco

TheNewsOutlet.org

Philip Leyman spent many years working as a bagger at a Giant Eagle supermarket – an irony for a man whose cerebral palsy and seizures now require him to use a wheelchair and force him to rely on a bus or taxi for his own groceries.

Leyman and one of his neighbors, David Senediak, use a public bus to take them to Walmart in Boardman. The men, who live in the Goodwill Apartments near the Market Street-Midlothian Boulevard intersection, are among thousands of Youngstown residents who live in what is called a “food desert” — an urban area with limited access to fresh food.

A 2010 federal study listed the Youngstown metropolitan area as the nation’s third worst area for the number of people suffering food hardships because they don’t have enough money to feed themselves.

That may change with Bottom Dollar Food building three grocery stores, 621 W. Princeton Ave. near the Idora neighborhood; 890 E. Midlothian Blvd.; as well as 3377 Mahoning Ave. in the Mahoning Plaza. This discount grocery store chain, run by Food Lion and a subsidiary of Delhaize Group, has stores in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Though it’s a good step, those three grocery stores will not feed the entire city and may not change Youngstown’s federal ranking. The federal report, compiled by the Food Research and Action Center in 2010, says that 24 percent of the metro Youngstown population suffers because, in addition to the problem of scarce stores, many residents simply don’t have money to buy enough food to feed their families.

The report shows that only Memphis, Tenn., and Bakersfield, Calif., had more “food hardship” during 2008-09, the period of time studied.

Data from the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. shows that most of Youngstown’s nearly 70,000 residents live more than a half -mile from a grocery store and that 18 percent of these people do not have access to a vehicle to drive them to stores.

City officials and organizers with the YNDC have launched several initiatives aimed at getting fresh food into Youngstown’s neighborhoods. In addition to luring supermarkets, they are working to set up urban gardens and farmers markets.

“There’s a lot to do,” said Ian Benniston, deputy director of the YNDC. “We have a very big problem in the city of Youngstown.”

Benniston said there are only five full-service grocery stores in the city or just over the border, and many city residents do not drive and live more than a short walk from them.

Leyman and Senediak epitomize that challenge. Neither drive, and Leyman’s wife, who also suffers from a disability, can drive, but they don’t have a car.

Leyman said he likes the apartment he shares with his wife and son. But he liked it even more when the Phar-Mor store was open at the corner of Midlothian and Market Street. That store, which sold everything from potatoes to dust pans, closed in 2002 and is now the Newport branch of the Public Library of Mahoning County.

At least once a week, Leyman, his wife and son take a bus to the Giant Eagle in Liberty. His wife and son take a taxi home because of the difficulty of managing the grocery bags on the bus.

Leyman has to take the bus because of his wheelchair. He said the total trip costs about $20 and cuts into their grocery budget – a budget that Leyman said is already tight.

“Eating right is so important for all of us,” Leyman said. “But it’s not easy, and it gets hard to get to the store and expensive to get there.”

Smaller stores, like Jordan’s Market in Youngstown, help fill in the shopping gaps.

Abdalla Shakhatreh has run Jordan’s since 1985. He is one of few merchants still operating on Market Street. Others have long since fled to the suburbs.

He is well aware of how important his grocery store is to the people who live in the neighborhoods that surround the lower portion of Market Street near downtown.

“They don’t have anywhere else to go,” Shakhatreh said.

Most of his customers walk or take the bus to the market, where they can pay utility bills, buy prepared food from the deli or get groceries, including some fresh fruit and vegetables. The market provides a hub of needed services. He said crime has never been a problem with his store.

Many so-called “corner markets” have signs on their buildings saying they offer food or groceries, but do not have fresh produce.

Shakhatreh has trouble understanding why other grocery retailers have not been able to stay open in city neighborhoods.

“These are good customers,” he said. “But I know them because I grew up here, and my kids know their kids.”

The News Outlet, which pairs student journalists with professionals, is a collaboration between Youngstown State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron and The Vindicator, The Akron Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio.

By Joe Giesy
TheNewsOutlet.org

Youngstown

Gailor Blake, 88, opened the door to his Austintown home at 9 a.m. to welcome Terri Zarlingo with a bright smile.

“She’s like family,” Blake said, as Zarlingo, a driver for Celtic Healthcare’s hot- meals delivery program, arrives.

Once Zarlingo finishes her short, friendly discussion with Blake, she sets his meal out and leaves. She may be the last person Blake — one of the last survivors of his own family — sees that day unless neighbors visit.

Many independent-living seniors in the Mahoning Valley face similar situations: They live alone with no one to check on them but social workers or home-nurse aides.

Other senior citizens do not receive home-visit services at all.

Several organizations in Youngstown and Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties provide services for the area’s aging population, but no overarching agency exists to centralize these services and standardize the well-being of the Mahoning Valley’s independent senior citizens.

Youngstown Councilwoman Annie Gillam thinks the city could benefit from a central agency.

Gillam, D-1st, said accounting for every person in the city may not be possible, but getting involved with programs through churches and area agencies could prove beneficial to better inform elderly citizens about available services.

Older adults living alone with no one to check on them could be in danger, said Alan Bayowski, gerontologist and director of the Shepherd Foundation, an affiliate of Shepherd of the Valley, which provides senior services in the Valley.

Should a senior fall or become too ill to seek treatment, that person could be left alone for days or even weeks, he said.

Lisa Solley with the Area Agency on Aging 11 Inc., Niles, said most older citizens want to stay in their homes, but they need some assistance.

Her agency collects federal, state and local funds and then distributes them to local providers in Ashtabula, Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties. Those providers then help those who qualify for services.

Solley said most people who request services might not qualify for funds, but the agency still tries to link them up with appropriate services. If no state funding is available, federal programs can sometimes be used, she said.

Ohio’s citizens and service organizations face the challenge of no state funding for citizens above the poverty line.

Organizations such as Celtic Healthcare, 3530 Belmont Ave., provide food, home-health aides and transportation for qualifying adults over 60 through grants.

Other federal funds provide services such as air-conditioning units for households in need. Solley said this service was used by AAA11 clients more recently in the high-temperature conditions last month.

Extreme weather conditions exacerbate danger when ice on the drive between the door and mailbox causes the senior citizen to slip or high heat affects pre-existing medical conditions such as breathing problems or congestive heart failure.

Bayowski said even five minutes in the hot sun can have a real negative effect on older adults, which becomes a problem when they try to work outside.

“As we get older, our desire to remain active pushes us to do things our bodies are unable to do,” Bayowski said.

Blake falls into this category.

He still manages his household chores and yard work. Despite seeing him for only short periods of time, Zarlingo was able to persuade him to leave his untrimmed hedges for another time and remain in his air-conditioned house during the recent summer heat wave.

Bayowski praised meal programs for this reason as vital to older adults who live alone because they provide both food and regular companionship.

Solley also spoke highly of the programs.

“For at least five days, you have someone checking on them,” Solley said.

Along with Celtic Healthcare and other programs in the Valley, Meals on Wheels Youngstown has volunteers deliver meals to clients who request the service.

Laura Jenkins with Meals on Wheels Youngstown said delivery drivers call her if a client who normally answers the door does not do so or things near the house seem out of the ordinary.

Jenkins said there were some occasions when emergency services discovered the client on the floor, unable to get up or even dead.

Zarlingo once came to the aid of a client who had a stroke and collapsed during the meal delivery. Zarlingo was able to call 911, and the woman still lives on her own several years after the incident.

The Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department provides a Senior Watch Program to identify households with independent-living senior citizens at risk of criminal victimization.

The Senior Services Unit identifies at-risk citizens through community outreach at public events senior citizens may attend. Like other agencies, the unit relies on referrals from community members.

Once a referral or request has been made, the unit contacts senior citizens in Mahoning County to determine their level of personal safety and then sends officers to visit them periodically and report suspicious activities.

For some communities, taking care of neighbors could be as simple as mowing the lawn or bringing in the newspaper.

Zarlingo takes it a step further, though, when she runs small errands for her clients that includes tracking down an extension cord for one man who could not plug in his air conditioner or a five-pound bag of sugar she would drop off for Blake when she made later deliveries back in Austintown.

The NewsOutlet, which pairs student journalists with professionals, is a collaboration between Youngstown State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron and The Vindicator, Akron Beacon Journal and Rubber City Radio.

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Up stream from where Luis Velazquez regularly casts his fishing pole beneath the Liberty-Girard Bridge, the slow moving water glistens in summer sunlight as oil residue creates a thin sliver silhouette along the riverbank. Calmly flowing down stream, water disappears and rushes over one of nine remaining low-head dams along the lower Mahoning River. Just over the crest of the industry made waterfall, fishermen such as Velazquez can often be found along the banks of what former Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams categorizes as the “most grossly underused” physical asset of the Mahoning Valley.

Velazquez, 30, a native of Youngstown’s West Side has heard stories all of his life of pollutants lurking below the same waters he has fished for the past 10 years and camped along as a kid. He said he is not deterred and will continue fishing.

Click for Video

YSU faculty devote careers to cleaning Mahoning River

Without hesitating, Lauren Schroeder, trudges into the Mahoning River warning that what was seeping into his weathered, once white tennis shoes is “nasty stuff.”
Knee high in water, with a fishermen’s hat atop his head, Schroeder, a retired professor of evolution and ecology at Youngstown State University, said he has been testing and monitoring the water of the Mahoning River for decades.
“In the 1960s, there was an environmental movement that was just awakening and a big press for environmental organizations, environmental studies and cleaning up the environment. I got caught up in that,” Schroeder said.
Schroeder and several of his YSU colleagues have spent decades studying the polluted river and trying to develop solutions for it.
More than 30 years after Schroeder’s work with the river began, however, the Mahoning River remains highly polluted despite collaborative efforts from river clean up enthusiasts.
In a study designed by Schroeder, YSU researchers want to identify unique algae organisms called diatoms thinking that they could help identify the most polluted areas of the river. that they could serve as a natural cleaning agent. (diatoms are not natural cleaning agents, rather they reflect the quality of the environment in which they live.) The sea shell-like diatoms naturally secrete a cell wall that is like glass, which acts as a barrier and allows diatoms to preserve themselves. There are more than 300 types of diatoms found throughout the Mahoning River.
“Each one has a particular set of environmental conditions where it grows the best in, and these conditions are different for each of these diatoms. So, if we go look at the diatoms that are present and we know what conditions they prefer, we can judge the quality of the river based on the computation of these diatom communities,” Schroeder said.
Schroeder will continue to survey the diatom populations below and above dam sites to measure the effects dams have on the diatom communities. He is hopeful the dams along the river will be removed and his study will then be able to research the effects of dam removals on diatom communities.
Scott Martin, chair of YSU Civil Engineering, said many at YSU have been attracted to studying the river.“The Mahoning is unique in that is highly polluted and has been for decades. There’s been a lot of study into the possibility of cleaning it up but that has kind of fizzled out to some extent due to government bureaucracy.”
He acknowledged it would be a long process to get the river clean, and he joked he may be gone by then. Regardless he is still conducting research and is hopeful one day the river will be clean. Martin first became involved with the Mahoning River watershed basin more than 27 years ago.
Martin and a graduate student work with Schroeder’s research to prioritize dams for removal in an effort to restore the river’s natural flow.
“That decision will ultimately be made by the regulators, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, who would need to provide permits for any dam removal,” Martin said.
Meanwhile in the biology department, Carl Johnston is working on sediment remediation. The study looks to identify the indigenous bacterium that lives within the contaminated sediments and apply what they learn to a cleanup.
“Once we work with the organisms we may be able to add either oxygen or some other nutrient or amendments that will stimulate the native bacteria,” he said.
Johnston said there’s going to have to be a lot of testing to find the optimal way of treating different parts of the river because of the differences in pollution levels and types.
“We should be doing small scale testing, chemical testing and then knowing what is in a particular site, you would decide how that should be treated.”

A river that was choked by pollutants for decades remains even further strangled by multi-government finger pointing that has resulted in the expenditure of millions of dollars on suggestions, but little action.

A $500,000 federally sponsored study conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1999 determined regardless of recent water quality improvements, the Mahoning River cannot be expected to be restored until the contaminated sediments are addressed.

The river remains a threat to public health. The Mahoning River, one of the most polluted waterways in America, is so contaminated that in 1988, the Ohio Department of Health issued a Health Human Advisory on the lower 28-miles of the river warning against contact with sediments and fish consumption.

Despite years of conversation and study and promises of funding and support, the Mahoning River is no closer to clean today than it was 30 years ago when companies stopped dumping millions of pollutants into the river each year.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer study said that as recently as 1977, the average net discharge from the nine major Mahoning Valley steel plants exceeded 400,000 pounds per day of suspended oils, 70,000 pounds per day of oil and grease, and 800 pounds per day of zinc.

The report further states, “to put these numbers in perspective, the million gallon Monongahela River Ashland oil spill of 1988 was characterized as one of the most severe inland oil spills in the nation’s history. However, by comparison, the much smaller Mahoning River chronically received the equivalent of more than four Ashland oil spills every year for decades.”

Another federally funded $3.5 million feasibility report explored methods to extract and remediate contaminated sediments, while ultimately restoring the natural river ecology. The report called for hydraulic and mechanical dredging of 750,000 cubic yards of in-river and riverbank contamination, and the removal of seven low-head dams. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can do neither.

Bill Decicco, who retired in August 2008 as executive director of Castlo Inc., spent much of his 20-year career as the leader of the economic development agency for Poland Township and the cities of Campbell, Struthers, Lowellville and Coitsville. He always thought that the Mahoning River would be cleaned up in his lifetime and then would be a great asset for the communities he served.

“If you were here in 2005 and said, ‘Bill, well what do you think about cleaning up the Mahoning River?’ I’d say, ‘Well 2005 we finish up this study and by 2017, 2020 at the latest, we’ll have a clean river.”

Decicco is not the only one who thought the river would be cleaned in his lifetime.

Youngstown Mayor Charles Sammarone, who has been involved in city government for 28 years, said he is no longer optimistic about chances for a clean up. “It’s been talked about for almost 40 years,” Sammarone said in a recent interview. “Everyone is in favor of doing it, it’s just how do you fund it?”

Sammarone’s predecessor, former Mayor Williams was also stumped on how to allocate funds.

Millions of dollars and thousands of hours have already been spent studying the pollution and the cancer-causing toxins buried in the riverbanks, and developing plans for how to fix the problems. Suggested methods have never progressed beyond the documentation to actual work. Clean up of the Mahoning River has been stalled in Phase II of the feasibility study.

Eastgate Regional Council of Governments became involved as the community sponsor in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers feasibility study bearing half of the financial burden. Rachel McCartney, of EastGate, says the river falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that is where the clean up funds were initially going to originate.

“Involving a federal agency such as the Corps has its positive and negative sides. Of course, we are now experiencing the negative side – a stalled project,” McCartney said.

Officials offer varying explanations for why the cleanup has stalled: disagreements about the proper approach to development, weak environmental laws, timid political leadership, and people unwilling to demand action. The major stumbling block, however, is who should pay for the estimated $150 million project.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17^th, said the factories that polluted the river, including many now-defunct steel companies, are legally responsible. He said that it is unlikely to be able to collect from them or from the companies that took over their former locations.

Ryan said the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers cannot do any dredging because of Congress’ “CERCLA” regulations, which operate on the premise that the polluter pays.

Ryan does not agree with those regulations,  “It would risk causing existing businesses on the Mahoning River watershed to be held liable for millions of dollars of clean up costs that some businesses inherited. The outcome could mean job losses, or even bankruptcy, for businesses already struggling to survive in these difficult economic times.”

Williams believes no one has tried to collect from any of the former companies, but he said he would support such efforts. U.S. Steel, with headquarters now in Pittsburgh, is the only company still in existence that once operated along the river.

“I would think it’d be highly improbable, if not impossible, for the local communities to go after these polluters. This is a federal issue,” Williams said.

In an interview while he was still mayor, Williams listed the cleanup of the river among the top 10 priorities for the city, but realized that little or nothing is happening to advance the effort.

“If the Mahoning River were clean and navigable, there would be more development in downtown,” he said, explaining that bodies of water attract people.

Williams isn’t sure if the river will ever be clean enough for recreation. “I’m always hopeful,” he said. “But it is a difficult and tedious process.”

Allison Preiss, press secretary for U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, said the Ohio lawmaker is committed to helping the effort. “Having clean and functional waterways is important for many communities in Ohio – Youngstown included,” she said. “Senator Brown is monitoring the clean up situation for the Mahoning River and stands willing to assist the Valley for anything that can be done on the federal level to contribute to that effort.”

Preiss, however, declined to discuss whether Brown would support measures to go after the original polluters. She also failed to answer questions regarding who is responsible for the clean up, but said, “for attaining federal funds through the Army Corps, senators/congressman can make a request during the appropriations process of the president can list the project in his budget, this typically implies that the Corps thinks the project is a priority.”

The contamination stems from years of long-idled steel and other industrial companies dumping waste into the river and using the water from the river for cooling products they manufactured.

Although steel companies have long since shuttered their operations in the Mahoning Valley, the toxic remnants they left have already survived more than 30 years. Without serious and sustained efforts to remove them will likely be here for decades to come, Decicco said.

A series of low-head dams trap sediment polluted with organic chemicals and heavy metals, holding the river hostage to years of industry.  The suggested dredging of 750,000 cubic yards of contaminated in-river and riverbank, with the removal of low-head dams would restore the rivers natural flow and ecology.

The Ohio EPA monitors, “chemical, biological and physical conditions within streams and rivers in Ohio,” according to Mike Settles of the Ohio EPA. The Mahoning was most recently studied 2006 to 2007 along the upper region located upstream from the Leavittsburg dam. The lower Mahoning was studied in the 1980s and 1990s, and a new study will be conducted in 2012.

Williams said the problem is that no one appears to be leading the cleanup effort despite the fact that there are several organizations chartered for such a purpose and people who draw paychecks for the work.

Daniel Mamula, who was hired in 2009 as the manager of the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative, said he believes that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – the federal agency that conducted the studies of the river – is supposed to be coordinating and leading the effort to find funding for the project.

Carmen Rozzi, the initial project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, says that’s not his agency’s job.

Instead, he says it is up to Congress to decide if it wants to allocate funding for the project.

“For federal involvement, a federal agency needs ‘two acts of Congress’ in order to accomplish anything,” Rozzi said. “Any federal agency needs authority to accomplish the mission then must seek the appropriations. At the Corps, we thought Section 312(b) Removal of Contaminated Sediments for Environmental Restoration within Navigable Waters was the authority, however it is missing much of what we need and is not a good fit for our effort.”

Mamula, the former mayor of Struthers, said that his agency is working to lure companies to locate businesses along the river. Since the initiation of the corridor initiative, utilizing grants from the Clean Ohio Fund and the Federal Brown Field program, 450 acres of brown field sites development is either remediated or under the process of being cleaned, and of that, 125 acres of brown fields meet commercial or industrial standards in the various communities along the Mahoning River.

“We want to do this business development as well as recreational, environmental and trying to keep that balance is really tough because the pressure is on for job and business,” Mamula said.

Lori Jordan, 43, of Austintown doesn’t fish the Mahoning but enjoys the tranquilly she finds along its banks.

“If they were to clean up the river, it would at least give people some positivity and hope. You know what, we are finally cleaning up the area. We can go somewhere that’s not real costly that you can relax and enjoy the day,” Jordan said.

Mamula is skeptical the river will ever be fully clean but believes sections will be addressed.

Mamula acknowledged Trumbull County is naturally ahead of recreational development with Packard Park and Perkins Park, in addition to bike trails and easy river access. Riverbanks in Mahoning are steep and difficult terrain, inevitably increasing recreation project price tags.  Mamula would like recreation development near the Covelli Center such as a bike path.

Despite the contact ban, Mamula said he does not understand why the river cannot be used for casual recreation now. He said the contact ban has not stopped people from boating or fishing on the river and he is not sure that it should. “People are using the river more and more,” Mamula said.

Williams, however, said he would hate to see too much time or money spent on developing recreational areas until the water is deemed safe.

Williams also said that companies that launch operations along the river might have to move if the cleanup and dredging effort is ever launched because dredging will involve bringing in large pieces of machinery and having plenty of space to navigate.

“The concern would be, we’d locate businesses right there on the banks, and the business says, ‘hey, it’s fine, it’s great,’ then three years later, we get this project rolling. All of the sudden boy that needed to be a staging area for the equipment or for the material that’s dredged and now we’ve got a business in an area that doesn’t make sense for cleaning the river.”

Mayor Sammarone, however, said he welcomes business along the banks of the Mahoning, ”you come in here with a business, we’ll bend over backwards to get you here,” he said.

Williams’ concerns about the direction of the corridor initiative are representative of much of the discussion that has surrounded the cleanup project. One person or organization wants to move one direction; another has a different vision; nothing happens.

Several groups and projects continue to push the cleanup and are receiving local and federal funding as well as private donations to sustain work related to the Mahoning River.

For instance, Mamula’s Mahoning River Corridor Initiative received an $80,000 grant from the Ohio Department Of Development to fund a feasibility study, “to establish a regional urban economical development and brown field revitalization plan.”

The Mahoning River Corridor Initiative also netted $15,000 from three non-profit organizations: $18,000 from nine participating communities, $5,000 from the Urban Universities Program and  $57,000 from the Fund for Our Economic Future to fund, “the design and implementation of an interactive web site to market selected corridor properties regionally and nationally,” Mamula said.

The creation of this organization brings the count to at least seven of the number of organizations devoted to the Mahoning River.

Other organizations who spend time or money working on development or clean up of the Mahoning River are the Mahoning River Consortium, Mahoning River of Opportunity, Mahoning River Corridor Mayors’ Association, Eastgate Regional Council of Governments, CASTLO, Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce and Commonwealth.

Rozzi said it’s very doubtful the Mahoning River will be cleaned if the funds cannot be allocated for the proposed cleanup project. However, the Department of Justice was successful in prosecuting an insurance agent of a former polluter and has provided the Ohio EPA with approximately $1.3 million of what would be considered non-federal funds for this effort Rozzi said.

Caitlin Cook, 22, is majoring in journalism and philosophy at Youngstown State University. She hails from Charleston, W.Va., where she graduated from Capital High School in 2007. At YSU, she is a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving Team. Much like a swimmer in water, she feels natural and complete when writing and pursuing new journalistic endeavors.

By CHRISTINE DARIN
TheNewsOutlet.org

CANFIELD

Kelly Black, feline manager and foster coordinator for Angels for Animals, walks through the shelter, showing room after room of animals.

She ends the tour in the overflow room, a small room filled with cages on the second floor.

Cats stick their paws out to play. Each cage is occupied.

“When this room fills up, I know I’m in trouble,” Black said. “That’s when I have to start making hard decisions.”

If Black can’t find the cats a home, she will have to start choosing which ones to euthanize.

The need to raise awareness and money for the hundreds of animals in the center’s care is a never-ending task. Animals suffering from abuse and neglect arrive every day.

Odysseus, an orange female cat, was brought to Angels for Animals in June with one eye surgically removed and a serious infection in the other. The shelter removed the remaining eye, and now she waits patiently to be adopted.

Odysseus, eager for affection, relies on her other senses as she easily makes her way through Black’s office to jump on any visitor’s lap.

Black said the shelter is always looking for new ways to raise funds for the facility. This year it entered the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ 100K Challenge.

During August, September and October, ASPCA challenges 50 animal welfare agencies to try to save at least 300 additional animals lives than each did during the same months in 2010.

Angels for Animals competed with 94 animal welfare agencies across the country in April to be one of the 50 agencies to face off for the challenge.

The facility with the largest increase in lives saved in excess of 300 will win the grand prize grant of $100,000. Second place will receive $25,000 and a $20,000 best-in-region grant will be given to the largest increase in saves within five regions throughout the United States.

Prizes will be announced Nov. 30.

Bert Troughton, vice president of ProLearning ASPCA Community Outreach, said the challenge helps the shelters raise the profile of their organizations.

“It is giving us an opportunity to re-evaluate our programs and expand on our programs,” Black said.

Last year, Angels for Animals saved 403 animals from euthanasia between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31, so the goal for the competition is to save at least 703 cats and dogs.

Actually, Kate McDermott, general manager of Angels for Animals, said the shelter hopes to save 1,000 pets.

“The overall goal is to raise awareness of the need for homes for thousands of animals,” McDermott said.

From Aug. 1-7 , the shelter will feature half-priced adoptions for the ASPCA Challenge Kick-Off Week. Among other upcoming promotions is the “Cat and Dog for a Song and Dance” from Aug. 9-12, during which potential adopters can sing a song and dance to receive a 25 percent discount on an adoption. The shelter plans to display the talent on YouTube.

Other events are the “Study Buddy Back to School Sale,” “Pet and Pajamas,” and “Plinko for Pets” tailored after the game on “The Price is Right.”

Angels for Animals received 2,951 animals dropped off there in 2010, a total that doesn’t include the animals already in-house or in foster homes. The shelter euthanized 2,999 animals and found homes for 1,513 last year.

“We don’t like the numbers, but it’s the reality of the situation,” said Diane Less, co-founder of Angels for Animals.

She said many of the animals are injured or sick and need to be euthanized. But the shelter receives hundreds of viable animals, and the funds don’t exist to spay and neuter, provide housing and care for them all.

Black said the biggest problem is that people don’t get their animals spayed and neutered. During an average kitten season, the shelter can receive 30 to 40 cats a day.

“If we can get everybody fixed, then we don’t have all these unwanted animals anymore,” she said.

If the Angels for Animals shelter wins the challenge, McDermott said the group will use the winnings for the spay/neuter program, updates to the facility and the adoption program.

“I think no matter who wins the challenge, every organization wins because of the greater awareness of the overall issue,” McDermott said.

For people who can’t adopt a pet, there are other ways to help Angels such as monetary donations, or donations of supplies including food, blankets, towels, and newspapers.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By CHRISTINE DARIN
TheNewsOutlet.org

CANFIELD

When Holly Heikkinen found a lump on her breast while nursing her youngest child last winter, she knew she was in for a battle.

The early-intervention specialist at Fairhaven School in Niles is no stranger to tough battles, however.

The 1998 Canfield High School graduate attended the University of Mount Union, and she was a standout volleyball and basketball player at each school.

Heikkinen, 31, said her parents always taught a good work ethic that pushed her to do well in sports.

Nicole Vlajkovich was five years younger than Heikkinen in high school, but she remembers the varsity coach telling seventh-grade summer basketball camp students to watch Heikkinen because she was so tough and such a good role model.

“She didn’t realize the impact she had on me,” Vlajkovich said.

Heikkinen’s family — her husband, Matthew; daughters, Hannah, 7, and Becca, 18 months; and son, Graham, 5 — relies on her teaching salary, and now they are faced with looming medical expenses due to her cancer.

Dr. Becky Heikkinen, her mother-in-law, and Vlajkovich, are hosting the “Benefit for Holly” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at Bernard-Daniels Lumber Co. parking lot, 250 Railroad St.

The event will feature a trash-and-treasure sale, a bike raffle, bake sale and a silent auction with gift baskets. Refreshments will be for sale, including water, lemonade, soda and hot dogs.

“One thing that is special about our school district is that we help our own,” Vlajkovich said. “It’s a tribute to her and a Canfield tradition.”

Doctors diagnosed Heikkinen with stage-two breast cancer in January. In February, Heikkinen began chemotherapy treatments lasting up to five hours each.
The sessions weakened her immune system, causing her to contract an infection that resulted in a three-day hospital stay.

Throughout the sessions, which ended June 3, she spent many days feeling nauseous.

Now, facing surgery, Heikkinen is focused on the impact her disease is having on her three young children.

“I keep my life as normal as possible for the sake of my children,” she said, often assuring them that while she would become very sick, she would get better after visiting the hospital.

On Thursday, Heikkinen will undergo bilateral mastectomy followed by radiation treatments for six weeks.

In addition to teaching full time and raising her children, Heikkinen’s treatments took her to Magee-Women’s Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center as well as local facilities for appointments, which sometimes required taking unpaid sick leave from work.

Heikkinen said she recently gave advice to a co-worker, who has a friend with cancer. She said to stay positive because battling cancer is a tough, depressing journey.

“If I didn’t laugh and stay positive, I would probably cry,” Heikkinen said.

Mary Jean Polkovitch, a Canfield High School teacher, said she’d like to see as many people as possible to come to the Sunday benefit.

“The thing that impressed me most about Holly was that she is so hardworking,” said Polkovitch, who taught Heikkinen honors English her junior year. “Holly is such a fighter.”

“The people I work with are wonderful, giving people,” Vlajkovich said, adding they have donated raffle items and helped in many ways.

Donations for the sale, including clothing, sports equipment, books, DVDs, kitchen items, furniture, toys, games, appliances will be accepted until Sunday morning before the benefit. To donate, call Dr. Heikkinen at 330-881-6667 or Vlajkovich at 330-204-8106.

Also needed are volunteers to work at the event, baked goods for the bake sale and gift baskets to raffle. Money can also be donated to the Holly Heikkinen Benefit Fund at any Huntington Bank branch.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By CHRIS COTELESSE
TheNewsOutlet.org

A light rain falls on the racetrack at Mountaineer Casino, and horses and jockeys cut through the thick, wet air of the West Virginia panhandle.

Limpopo takes an early lead around the turn. She’s more than two lengths ahead by the homestretch.

Strike Up a Ruckus takes to the outside in fourth place. Her muscles flex and relax in ever-quickening cycles, kicking up wet earth. A middle-aged woman in sweatpants drags deeply on a cigarette and whispers, “Come on, Ruckus.”

But Limpopo is too far ahead. This race is hers. But for the woman, there will be other races.
Every week, she and hundreds of others come to the racetrack in Newell, W.Va. At least two companies are trying to bring that same draw to the Mahoning Valley.

One company is hoping to build a racetrack in Austintown, and the other wants to locate in Vienna.
But like people who place bets at racetracks, the cities that host these facilities aren’t guaranteed a win. There are many hurdles to overcome, including a change in state law, before either racetrack would materialize.
And like Limpopo — only one company will win.

Tom Fries, executive director of the Ohio Racing Commission, said the organization is going to take its time with the application process.

“We’ll take all sorts of variables into consideration. Obviously, economic impact would be one of them — their commitment to horse racing in Ohio.”

Two Ohio communities that house racetracks, according to their officials, said that the payoff from racetracks may not be much.

Beulah Park, built in 1923, is Ohio’s first racetrack. At the height of its popularity, it wasn’t uncommon for 5,000 to 8,000 people to visit its 210 acres each racing day and stay in one of Grove City’s 1,300 hotel rooms.
It was a staple of the local economy. But in recent years, interest in horse racing has seen a marked decline.
Chuck Boso, development director for Grove City, believes that the Beulah Park land is being “underutilized.”
He said Beulah Park employs about 100 people, most of whom are part time. The track hosts two meets, once in the fall and again beginning in the winter. Grove City receives up to $15,000 in taxes on the betting pool for each meet.

“One could argue that there could be better use of the grounds and increased potential revenue to the city,” he said.

Thistledown, in North Randall just southeast of Cleveland, has experienced the same.
Chuck Horvath, building commissioner for North Randall, said that at its peak, the track employed around 800 people.

That number is now about 250 during the live season and about 100 otherwise, according to its reports.
The foot traffic generated by the track used to overflow to the Randall Park Mall across from Thistledown. But the mall has been closed for three years.

“Our community is mostly a retail-driven community, and a lot of them have left,” he said.
Austintown Administrator Michael Dockry is more optimistic about the economic benefit of horse racing in his community.

He welcomes plans by Penn National Gaming Inc., owners of Beulah Park, to build a racetrack where Interstate 80 meets state Route 46.

Penn National said the project would create an estimated 1,500 direct and indirect jobs to operate and maintain the facility.

Bob Tenenbaum, spokesman for Penn, said the construction jobs had not been estimated but offered a comparison.

“This is a $200 million facility. The casino that’s under construction in Columbus is a $350 million facility, and it’s going to have 3,500 construction workers. So we’re talking about a significant number of construction jobs,” he said.

There also is a potential increase in commercial traffic that could persuade businesses to develop around the racetrack.

“There is vacant space, virgin land, if you will, on state Route 46 that I think would see a boost in value,” Dockry said.

Austintown will receive up to $15,000 for each horse-racing meet, and Dockry noted a one-time purchase of a zoning permit at a cost between $150,000-$200,000.

But, he said the real gain would be “just a general economic impact.”

“More people looking to own homes probably both in Austintown and the surrounding area … more people working, spending money not only on homes but on groceries and food. All the area businesses ought to find some benefit,” he said.

But Austintown isn’t ready for a victory lap just yet. Developers will have to hurdle state law.

PNG wants to relocate its operations in Beulah Park to Dayton and Raceway Park in Toledo to Austintown. Tenenbaum said these proposals depend on whether the Ohio Racing Commission approves the moves, and whether the state allows slot machines, officially called video lottery terminals, beyond the casinos and into the racetracks.

PNG owns the rights to build two of Ohio’s four new casinos in Columbus and Toledo. Racetracks so near their casinos could hurt PNG’s business model.

Alternatively, Tenenbaum said allowing VLTs at racetracks and widening the radius between gaming facilities would increase income to the tracks, tax revenue by $200 million, and horse-racing purses by $5 million to $6 million.

The total tax revenue paid by all seven of Ohio’s racetracks to the state in 2009 was less than $9.5 million, down from more than $14 million in 2005.

While PNG plans only to build if VLTs are legalized, another company wants to go forward even without the machines.
About 20 miles, or 160 furlongs, northeast of Austintown is Vienna, where the Mahoning Valley Development Group plans to build a horsetrack and resort.

Mahoning Valley Development Group Chairman Rick Lertzman has been lobbying to legalize gambling for more than 20 years with My Ohio Now. In 2008, the group wrote a ballot measure that would have brought a casino to southwestern Ohio.

He believes MVDG has a competitive edge over PNG.

“We’re building a resort facility too. So we’re looking at having a major structure to have kind of an all-year-round resort.”

He estimated the annual revenue at around $250 million for gambling if the VLTs are allowed, and $120 million for the resort, which would include an indoor water park.

Lertzman said the economic benefits would reach beyond the gaming facility.

“It’s kind of a ripple effect when you create an industry like this. … Besides the 1,500 jobs, another 1,000 jobs will be created by the ancillary industries that service the facility.”

But only one project will make it to the finish line. Ohio law requires at least 50 miles between racetracks.
“If Penn National applies, they will get permission to relocate the license from Toledo to the Valley,” Tenebaum said.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By CHELSEA MILLER
TheNewsOutlet.org

CANFIELD

Pete Widera remembers last Aug. 30 well.

At first, the signs were slight: tight chest and difficulty breathing. Fifteen minutes later, his wife, Jeanne Widera, 66, had a full-fledged heart attack.

The Canfield man called 9-1-1 and, after his wife was resuscitated, asked Lane Ambulance workers to take her to St. Elizabeth Health Center’s hospital in Youngstown, one of 13 Level I trauma centers in Ohio.

Four months later, Jeanne died.

He now wonders if his hospital choice may have cost Jeanne her life.

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have flown her to Cleveland,” he said.

Widera believes that his wife’s death may have been prevented if a procedure, called therapeutic hypothermia, had been used when she first came to the emergency room.

While it’s not uncommon for grieving family members to make such claims, therapeutic hypothermia is practiced at all 11 Level 1 trauma facilities in Ohio. ValleyCare Northside Medical Center in Youngstown, which is not a Level I Trauma Center, also uses the procedure.

Therapeutic hypothermia is performed with a cooling blanket that reduces body temperature to about 32 degrees, said Dr. Andrew Burger, a cardiologist at the University Hospital of Cincinnati, who uses this procedure. The body temperature is then closely monitored to slow body organs to reduce injury and brain damage.

“The equipment is not complex,” he said. “[Doctors have to]understand how it works, but it’s not hard.”

Although some instances don’t warrant the procedure, such as being brain-dead on arrival or showing no hope of recovery,, Burger said the procedure is usually recommended.

It was unavailable last fall to treat Jeanne Widera.

St. E’s has it today.

In the past decade, therapeutic hypothermia has become a standard of care.

A study published in 2002 in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 55 percent of the 136 cardiac- arrest patients who received the procedure had a favorable outcome. After six months, cardiac mortality rates were 41 percent in the hypothermia group and 55 percent in the non-hypothermia group.

Since then, the procedure has become widespread in U.S. hospitals.

“Every community, I would hope by now, has a place where they offer this therapy,” said Dr. Michael Mooney, interventional cardiologist and co-director of cardiovascular labs at the Minneapolis Heart Institute.

Dr. Mooney, who has been performing the procedure for six years at his hospital, said, “The American College of Emergency Physicians has come out in favor of it; so has the American College of Cardiology, and so it’s not considered controversial anymore.”

St. Elizabeth officials said that because therapeutic hypothermia was not a “required” standard of care, they did not use it.

The procedure may not be “required,” but several studies have proven the benefits of therapeutic hypothermia, said Dr. Vincent Mosesso, a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh

“I would say over the last couple years, it’s become more and more like a standard of care,” Mosesso said.

Jeanne’s final months of life were back and forth between local facilities.

She was admitted to a local nursing home in October, but after breathing troubles, she was readmitted to St. E’s.

Through her ordeal, she was essentially incapacitated, Pete said. She would open her mouth and eyes but was not able to breathe without support. In December, with no hope of recovery, Pete said it was recommended that Jeanne come off life support. Eleven days later, Jeanne died.

St. Elizabeth’s could not comment on her care because of patient confidentiality.

But it would discuss where it is headed with the procedure.

Lisa Parish, vice president of clinical services and supply chain management at Humility of Mary Health Partners, said the hospital has recently begun performing the procedure with a small group of patients.

Tina Creighton, spokesperson for St. Elizabeth’s, said the hospital decided to offer the procedure after other hospitals have proven it to be beneficial.

“After sometimes years of research and observation a procedure can become a ‘best practice’ or standard of care,” she said. “These other options have been tested to be safe and may be useful, but it’s important to remember that there is typically not just one that is the best, or the only option for effective care.”

When Widera was admitted, the hospital offered a procedure called RapidBlue, which is a type of therapeutic hypothermia or heart- attack victims, said Jessica Ulbrich, a representative of St. Elizabeth’s. The hospital also offers passive cooling by placing a cool blanket on the patient.

Patient condition and physician preference determines if the procedure is needed and which type is used, said Parish.

Widera said neither option was given to his wife.

“I’ve talked to a lot of other hospitals, and they have it available. They know Medicare does not cover this, but it’s available to save a person’s life that’s there,” he said. “I was told … three times (by representatives of St. Elizabeth’s), that this system is not cost-effective and Medicare won’t cover it.”

Creighton said coverage of the procedure depends on the insurance plan or provider, but the hospital provides care regardless of a person’s ability to pay.

Dr. Mosesso said in Widera’s case, he would have transferred her to Northside Medical if it meant the procedure would be performed.

“I would recommend that if the person had sudden cardiac arrest and was resuscitated, that they should be transported to a hospital that has a program for post resuscitation, including therapeutic hypothermia,” he said.

While the procedure is not available at every hospital, those who have suffered from cardiac arrest should be transferred to a hospital that performs it, Dr. Mooney said.

He also stressed there should have been better communication between the hospital and the ambulance taking her there.

“The problem may really have been with the EMS system — to not know that they need to … take these patients to the right hospital,” Dr. Mooney said.

Randy Pugh, chief operations officer for Lane Ambulance, said his crew takes the patient to the hospital of the family’s preference, with the exception of trauma victims. Pugh said Lane offers recommendations, but must follow the patient’s wishes.

“Patients who have had cardiac arrest, particularly if it’s not traumatic, should in my view, be brought to centers who offer therapeutic hypothermia,” Dr. Mooney said.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists.

By Doug Livingston
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN
National and local urban planners say Rust Belt cities such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh have survived and flourished through comprehensive city planning.

Well-staffed planning departments have revitalized post-industrial communities by transforming the stagnant business district in downtown Cleveland into a vibrant area for stores and eateries.

Likewise, once languishing Station Square in Pittsburgh has been revitalized as a revenue-raking tourist attraction.

Youngstown, like Pittsburgh and Cleveland, has embraced a comprehensive plan for the future: the Youngstown 2010 plan. Unlike Pittsburgh and Cleveland, however, some say the 2010 plan has lost momentum and point to the absence of a fully staffed city planning department as part of the problem.

City council members want to fill the position of city planner, vacant since Anthony Kobak quit in 2009. But at the urging of the city administrators, who say there isn’t money in the city’s general fund for the post, council hasn’t allocated funding for it.

William D’Avignon, director of the city’s Community Development Agency, said fully implementing the 2010 plan and effectively shrinking Youngstown has not happened because of vacancies in the planning department, which has lost three of its five employees since 2002 when the 2010 plan was drafted.

A 25 percent funding cut to local governments for the fiscal year beginning July 1 and then a 50 percent cut for the year beginning July 1, 2012 — proposed by the governor and approved by the Ohio House — discouraged filling the city planner and the park and recreation director positions, city officials say.

Councilman Jamael Tito Brown, D-3rd, said there may still be hope to seize administration funds for a chief planner from the CDA budget, which allocates state and federal entitlements for housing and urban development.

Mayor Jay Williams said that until concessions are made in other areas of government, namely the judicial and legislative branches, funding would remain scarce.

“It becomes virtually impossible to try to hire new people when you’re trying to first maintain the people you have,” Williams said.

His efforts to maintain staff at the police and fire departments take priority over the planning department.
“The argument isn’t whether planning is important,” Williams said, agreeing with council’s push for a city planner, but the mayor says he also has to focus on the pressing issues of crime and city services.
D’Avignon has assumed the duties of chief city planner for the past two years.

“The city has an internationally recognized plan, and effectively implementing it has been difficult without the proper staff,” D’Avignon said.

Bill Kline, director of research and advisory services for the American Planning Association, said planning staffs are logical targets for cuts.

“Cities are tightening their belts. People are getting laid off,” Kline said. “Who wants to cut back on the fire department and watch your house burn down?”

Officials agree the need to shield police and fire departments from major budgetary cuts is understandable, even at the expense of long-term planning efforts. But Kline and other urban-development experts say that to alleviate ongoing blight, crime and other elements, the city must look into the future.

Former city planners and experts in the American Planning Association explain that a city planner has the ability and training to think long term and comprehensively, bringing together all the issues that plague cities. A planner prioritizes these issues, seeks funds to address them and forms a plan.

D’Avignon said a city planner potentially could bring millions of dollars for urban development. But the city and taxpayers can’t afford the $180,000 cost for the chief planner and park and recreation director positions.
“If the person brings in grants, that’s fine,” Williams said. “But you don’t build the department around the hope that grants are going to come and sustain it.”

Williams said salary and benefit costs for the city’s employees account for nearly 80 percent of the general-fund budget. The city planner position would cost money when funds are dire. And the impact of the recession on state and local budgets has downsized the planning and urban development departments in many cities.
Hunter Morrison, former director of campus planning and community development for Youngstown State University and former Cleveland city planner, said council and administrators are not always in agreement over the importance of a planning department.

“As a planner who’s gone up against a lot of councilmen over a lot of years justifying my existence and the existence of the staff that worked for me in the city of Cleveland, it’s music to my ears” to hear that council and the mayor agree that planning is important, Morrison said.

Along with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp., Williams has turned to YSU to help with the insufficient staffing at the planning department.

“Every city in Ohio that I know of is stretched, and nobody’s operating at an ideal strength,” Morrison said. “Every city in this day and age is faced with some hard choices between hiring cops and hiring planners, and usually they hire cops.”

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By Christine Keeling
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN
Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church passes its Sunday collection plate to a congregation of 1,500 — including a few top Youngstown city officials — while county and state agencies wait for the thousands of dollars they are owed.
The Youngstown-based church has amassed a public record trail of debt that includes $257,950 in unpaid income tax, $38,000 in delinquent and potentially delinquent property taxes, $11,786 owed to the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation and loans totaling $2.5 million taken against properties it owns in Youngstown.
In addition, a state auditor found the church’s foray into a charter school, Legacy Academy for Leaders and the Arts, yielded a $598,000 operating loss, and the
Mahoning County prosecutor’s office is working to recover some of the funds.
Still, Mount Calvary leaders are considering building a new church on the former Idora Park property on the city’s South Side.
“It [debt] won’t plague the development plan,” said Jason Whitehead, chief of staff to Mayor Jay Williams and undershepherd of Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church. “Needlessly to say, under the new leadership of Pastor [C. Shawn] Tyson we are looking to retire all debt the church now has and move forward aggressively with building a new edifice.”
The church’s former leader, Bishop Norman Wagner, died in January 2010, and Pastor Tyson was installed in October.
Whitehead said the church’s plans are more dependent on how much the church leadership wanted to spend on a new building.
“It’s really the church deciding what they are going to build,” said Whitehead. “Are they going to build a $2 million church, or are they going to build a $5 million church?”
Whitehead said he wasn’t part of the church’s decision-making in the past but began getting involved in its development plans over the last year. Whitehead was a candidate for church pastor after Wagner‘s death.
Mahoning County Courthouse records show 11 tax liens filed against the church in 2010 by the Ohio Department of Taxation totaling more than $37,000 and four 2008 filings for more than $274,000.
Dan Tierney, public information officer for the Ohio attorney general, confirmed by email the church’s outstanding tax liability at $257,950. The state’s attorney general files liens on behalf of the state tax department.
John Kohlstrand, former communication director for the Ohio Department of Taxation, said tax-lien cases proceed after a tax payment goes delinquent or a return is not filed.
“It’s a little less common for a church to be involved in a tax issue, but it’s not unheard of,” said Kohlstrand, who was displaced in January by the Kasich administration.
Not including Legacy Academy, Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church has ties to nonprofit organizations Calvary Publications and Calvary Estates Inc., which received more than $4.2 million in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loans for its senior-living apartments, Calvary Towers, on Market Street in November. The church also founded Mayor Williams’ alma mater, Calvary Christian Academy, which closed in 2001.
Kohlstrand said liens were placed against all properties the church owns in the county until the tax liabilities are resolved.
Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church and its defunct, private tuition-funded Calvary Christian Academy School own 88 properties throughout Youngstown and didn’t pay 2010 Mahoning County property taxes on more than 60 of them.
As of March, the Mahoning County auditor’s website showed the church owed more than $4,000 in delinquent property taxes in 2010. The church could be responsible for an additional $22,256 for its Idora Park property ownership. A 2007 tax-exempt application filed for Idora Park was denied by the state. The church has that decision under appeal.
American Tax Funding, a bulk-sale purchaser and servicer of delinquent property taxes, said in an email it had more than 300 property liens in the church’s and Calvary Christian Academy’s name that the Florida company bought when the church failed to pay its property taxes in previous years. The liens totaled almost $12,000.
The company said it had additional liens against the church and school that expired in April 2010. Ohio law gives lien purchasers six years to take action against property owners.
Whitehead said a nonexistent school owning pockets of properties isn’t good for the city.
“Taking off my hat as Mount Calvary member and putting on the hat of being chief of staff to the city, you want the owners [of land] to be someone who wants to cultivate that land, take care of the land and take pride in the land,” Whitehead said.
He said that throughout the years, people deeded many of the properties to the school after they died, and the church was unaware of their ownership until it got a tax bill.
The church “probably wouldn’t have accepted those properties if we had known in advance,” Whitehead said.
Whitehead said the church is considering turning some of the properties over to Lien Forward Ohio for future development. Lien Forward’s goal is to work with the communities to return land to productive use
A representative at iServe, a real-estate and mortgage lender in Texas, said the church had ignored all communication attempts regarding a $525 lien the company is servicing for unpaid property taxes at the church’s 1812 Oak Hill Ave. worship location.
And the church’s debt doesn’t stop at its doors.
Mount Calvary’s parking lot is home to its cash-strapped, trailer-housed charter school, Legacy Academy for the Leaders and Art, which opened in 2001.
According to a 2004 state audit, released in 2009, Legacy Academy had 153 students enrolled and employed 35 people. It received more than $1.2 million in state funding and accrued a $598,000 operating loss. Four of its five-member governing board are appointed by the church.
The audit showed the school collected more than $100,000 in federal withholdings, $16,318 in Medicare withholdings and $33,575 in city income tax from employee payroll checks, but didn’t remit the money to the Internal Revenue Service or the city of Youngstown.
The school “is subject to collection activity,” Mayor Williams, a church member, said in March, about past-due income taxes. “No entity is immune.”
Williams said he was no more involved in his church’s decisions than Catholic church members were in deciding which parishes were going to close.
Collection of city income taxes is contracted to the independent Regional Income Tax Agency, which wouldn’t discuss delinquent tax matters. It also filed a complaint against Legacy Academy for Leaders and Arts seeking $84,162 in outstanding city income tax April 18.
Of that, $62,070 was for taxes not remitted from employees in these tax periods: September through December 2006, all of 2007 and 2008, January through September 2009 and July through December 2010.
The additional $22,092 is being sought for penalties and interest.
According to the state audit, money exchanges between the school, the church and employees were inappropriate or undocumented. Among the findings:
Legacy Academy paid more than $26,000 for utilities and maintenance that should have been paid by its leaseholder, Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church.
The church received $6,897 for administrative services with no proper documentation or approval from the school’s governing board.
The school was obligated to pay annual rent to the church after its first year of operation in the amount of $540,000 but owed $154,000 at the time of the audit.
Some teacher’s expenses were reimbursed without proper receipts.
“We are in the process of recovering funds,” said Karen Gaglione, an assistant county prosecutor. “It’s not in a lawsuit state, yet.”
Although Gaglione said the parties were cooperating regarding issues outlined in the 2004 audit, the Ohio Bureau of Worker’s Compensation said it was shortchanged in 2010.
In November, Melissa Vince, spokeswoman for BWC, said a letter dated Oct. 22 was sent to the school regarding more than $11,000 it owed worker’s compensation since Sept. 2.
As of March, the amount was still owed, and new problems for the school surfaced.
Mahoning County Common Pleas Court records show the Ohio Department of Taxation filed income-tax actions against the school for more than $258,000 during December 2010 and January 2011.
Education had always been a cornerstone of the church, Whitehead said.
“The economic piece is being given a lot of attention,” Whitehead said. “We want to be an example of doing things correctly and doing things right, so there are no outstanding tax liabilities, no audit findings, etc.”
He said the church is looking at its future in the community school business.
“If the expenses are exceeding revenue and because it’s such a competitive arena, we are evaluating whether or not to remain in it,” he said. “And if we remain, what adjustments do we have to make to meet all expenses?”
Legacy Academy announced a public financial-emergency meeting at the school March 19, but no meeting appeared to take place.
Records at the Mahoning County Recorder’s office indicate how the church tried to handle debt in the past.
On June 1, 2007, the church used its worship address to secure a $1.8 million loan from America’s Christian Credit Union of California. It then settled a $1.5 million lawsuit filed by Teen Missions International of Florida for nonpayment of loans the church took to develop its City of God complex on the 26-acre Idora parcel and also paid more than $200,000 on liens held by the Internal Revenue Service.
In July 2007, Mount Calvary used its former Idora Park parcel and 13 of its other Youngstown properties to secure another loan for $680,000 from America’s Christian Credit Union. The loans totaled almost three times the market value on the county auditor’s website.
Edward Bolling Sr., chief financial officer of Mount Calvary and Legacy, would only offer that the church took loans from Teen Mission to purchase the Idora property.
“In order to protect the privacy and interest of the church, there is going to be information I’m not going to divulge without first finding out from Mr. Whitehead what information he divulged,” Bolling said.
He then declined to comment further. Further attempts to speak to Whitehead went unanswered, as did all attempts to speak with Pastor Tyson.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By Christine Keeling

TheNewsOutlet.org

The land that featured a well-known roller coaster, big-name performances and legendary french fries now offers dangling power lines, obscene graffiti and a patchwork of weeds sprouting from asphalt cracks.

Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church proposed building a $50 million City of God when it purchased the former Idora Park property on Youngstown’s South Side for $300,000.

That was 1985.

But 26 years later, the divine destination is derelict and its future undecided.

The 26-acre parcel sits in the middle of a massive neighborhood-redevelopment effort, the church is reconsidering its plan and Mahoning County could lose more than $21,000 in property taxes if the state decides, after almost four years, to classify it tax-exempt.

“It’s just sitting there,” said 30-year Idora neighborhood resident Bernice Ward. “They won’t sell it; they won’t do anything about it. We tried to reach [the church] to see if we could go there for a minute. But they don’t return our calls.”

James London, Idora Neighborhood Association president, said he attempted to contact the church two years ago to get permission to have a community picnic at the site and later to paint rusted posts on the property. He said the church never responded. London said he eventually asked the church to reply if it objected to the project.

Idora’s important to the neighbors and the city.

Besides painting the posts, the association developed a 4-H group that received a statewide award for urban youth engagement, stopped the sale of liquor at the Party Pantry and Park N Shop and is collaborating with Councilman Paul Drennen to object to Gina’s Food Mart’s liquor license. It also worked with the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. to provide garden signs in the neighborhood.

The city of Youngstown, in collaboration with the YNDC, spent more than $1.5 million revitalizing the Idora neighborhood after a plan was adopted by city council in March 2008.

In 20 months, the city demolished 56 houses, added new street signs and joined forces with the YNDC to rehab more than 30 homes. In addition, the YNDC secured 30 vacant dwellings, repaired five homes, installed three pavilions, returned 118 lots to productive use and gave down-payment assistance to six homebuyers.

A new 18,000-square-foot grocery store in the area is preparing to break ground, and Mill Creek MetroParks plans to spend $300,000 to upgrade the East Cohassett Trail that runs through the neighborhood.

Presley Gillespie, executive director of the YNDC, said he believes the church-owned Idora Park parcel negatively impacts the economics and pride of the community and affects the quality of residents’ lives.

One church member and city leader disagreed.

Jason Whitehead, chief of staff to Mayor Jay Williams and undershepherd of Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church, said he doesn’t believe the property is negative as it stands today.

“The City of God is not a geographical location,” said Whitehead. “It’s concept was that the city of Youngstown would be a place where God would reign supreme, reign first in the lives of men and women, and [the church] would seek to develop the entire city as a place where men and women [who are part of Christian leadership] could come rest and relax.”

He said the church looked to use the Idora property as its “centerpiece.”

The church’s City of God plan included a nursing home, counseling center, shopping plaza, retirement home and religious education and worship facilities. It was set to break ground in 1987.

“The concept is being modified,” said Whitehead. “The Christian-restoration concept was really driven by Bishop [Norman] Wagner.”

He said the church’s new leadership would make its decision on the future of the property in 12 to 18 months.

Wagner died in January 2010 and District Elder C. Shawn Tyson was installed as the new leader of Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church in October.

Leroy Simmons, a 30-year Idora resident, said he knew about the church‘s original plan and believes the neighborhood’s future would be better if the property got in the hands of someone who would take action.

Bill D’Avignon, director of Youngstown Community Development and Planning, said the department looked at taking control of the property when the church stopped paying its property taxes but found the church had filed for tax-exempt status.

Yvette Klenotic, delinquent real-estate director for the Mahoning County treasurer, said properties with unpaid property taxes could face a lien sale or foreclosure. But, if a tax-exempt status is pending, no action will be taken against the property owner.

“It’s stalemated until a decision is made,” said Klenotic.

In May 2007, the church filed an application for Real Property Tax Exemption and Remission to the Mahoning County auditor on its Idora property and 12 surrounding properties on Woodford Avenue and Pearce Avenue.

On the application, the church stated the properties were “used for special church events.” Its plans included building a “new church edifice,” and its tax-exempt use began in 1994.

John Kohlstrand, former communication director for the Ohio Department of Taxation, said tax exemptions are given to primary sites of worship. He said church-owned baseball fields and properties with administrative buildings on them that facilitate worship have been rejected due to an Ohio Supreme Court ruling. But, he added, consideration can be given if a church is in the process of being built.

If the tax-exempt status is granted in full, Kohlstrand — displaced in January by the Kasich administration — said the church could receive a refund on property taxes paid since 1994.

If the application is denied, the church would owe $21,256 in property taxes on the Idora property not paid since 2007.

“We haven’t ruled out [building a new church], but we’re not locked into that property right now,” said Whitehead. “We are really looking at some out-of-the-box thinking as it compares to what we have stated in the past.”

He said the church, as a private-property owner, can do whatever it wants with the property, but its new leadership considered keeping portions of the land as green space and using a nostalgic and historical approach with walking trails for people who are inquisitive about the former amusement park. He also said portions of the property may be turned over to Mill Creek MetroParks.

Youngstown’s 2010 plan for Idora seemed more definite. It lists the property’s future use as recreational area.

“Each vacant property in Youngstown has unique assets and uses,” said Mayor Williams.

He said 2010 plan developers thought Idora’s “highest and best” use was recreational space because of its natural geographical location next to Mill Creek MetroParks.

Williams, a member of Mount Calvary Pentecostal Church, said he isn’t involved in its leadership or any decisions made by church leaders.

“I don’t know the future of the property,” said Williams. Neighbors, the development corporation “and the church need to come to a consensus,” he added.

He said the city would support those efforts.

Whitehead said Tyson’s Mount Calvary wanted to be good neighbors and not on the opposite side of the aisle. But the church was not going to allow a neighborhood group to dictate the parcel’s future.

Last fall, YNDC leaders extended an invitation to meet with church leaders to discuss the possibility of layering resources.

“There’s unlimited possibilities that can take place in that space,” said Gillespie. “No one organization can do it.”

On Dec. 8, the Ohio Department of Taxation denied the church’s application for tax exemption because the church failed to respond to its Sept. 24 letter requesting more information.

The tax-exempt application “was denied because the church failed to submit information that supported progress had been made toward the goal of creating a property that would be exempt,” said Gary Gudmundson, communication director for the Ohio State Department of Taxation. “The state looked to see, did they do any fundraising? Hire an architect? Contractor? Was there any tangible demonstration that they are moving forward?”

In mid-January, Whitehead and Tyson agreed to meet with the YNDC.

Gillespie said during the Jan. 27 introductory meeting that the church expressed an interest in working with the YNDC and the community to develop a plan for the Idora property that benefited all parties.

“The fact they sat with us is a good first step,” said Gillespie.

Two weeks later, the taxation department set aside its tax-exemption denial.

Gudmundson said the church provided information about the Idora property’s future in February that resulted in the change of ruling. Though he said he was not able to elaborate, he added the state made further inquiries in March about the church’s plans, but that it has yet to respond.

Gudmundson didn’t put a time line on the state’s final decision, other than to say, “When [the church] responds as best as they can to our requests and proves convincingly why the property should be exempt, we can make a decision.”

He said the department was working directly with the church and hoped it could provide the additional information in the next 30 to 60 days.

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Twisters tend to lose punch as they reach Northeast Ohio, local weather professionals say

By Dillon Deshong
TheNewsOutlet.org

As tornado sirens wailed yet again across the Midwest and Southeast this week and the nation continues the cleanup from a series of powerful storms, Northeast Ohio remained relatively quiet.

Already this April, the National Weather Service is investigating 509 possible tornadoes — more than twice the recent average — and 38 people have been killed.

Tuesday night brought the latest threat to this area as a powerful line of storms roared across Illinois and Indiana, pushing 75 mph winds and large hail into the Buckeye State, where there were five confirmed tornadoes.

But an interesting thing happened as those storms roared across the western part of the state and into the northeast early Wednesday morning: They lost their punch.

That should come as no surprise.

The loosely defined ”tornado alley” — the unfettered flatlands where warm moist Gulf air meets chilly northern air — comes to an end as it approaches the tall buildings, lake-effect winds and the Appalachian foothills of Ohio’s eastern half.

The numbers show clearly that the farther east you go in Ohio, the fewer the tornadoes.

Since 2000, Stark County has had seven tornadoes — more than any other Northeast Ohio county in the past 10 years.

On the other hand, Columbiana County to the east of Stark hasn’t had a tornado since 1995, and Trumbull County, east of Portage, has been tornado-free since 1998.

Gary Garnet, a ”warning coordinator” for the National Weather Service in Cleveland, has built a career on studying weather patterns.

While science has come a long way in helping to predict where severe weather will hit, Garnet admits that severe weather can strike anywhere.

A search of records back to 1950 shows that people who live in Lorain County to the west of Cleveland have a higher chance of encountering a tornado than those who live in any other county in Northeast Ohio.

Lorain County is Ohio’s fifth-largest county in square miles, extends as far south from the lake as Akron is, and is on the eastern edge of the level terrain.

Lorain has had 27 tornadoes in that period, and following south, the numbers aren’t much different. Medina and Wayne counties both have had 21 in that period, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

Garnet said there are multiple geographic factors that make some counties more prone than others.

Lake County, with only two tornadoes in 60 years, is a narrow strip along the Lake Erie shoreline. Cool air coming off the lake pushes thunderstorms farther inland, he said.

”Lorain County is a little longer north and south, so that lake breeze doesn’t always make it all the way through,” said Garnet. ”The southern part of Lorain County is susceptible to getting storms, therefore it is more susceptible to getting tornadoes.”

Complacency warning

Mike Conklin, an adjunct professor of geology at the University of Akron, warns that residents shouldn’t be complacent.

”Overall, there is not a steadfast rule where a tornado cannot form. So anywhere is pretty much possible,” Conklin said.

Four of the nation’s 52 most severe tornadoes since 1950 — categorized as F5 — occurred in Ohio, and two were in unlikely places: Niles east of Portage County and in Gallipolis, a town tucked along the Ohio River in southeast Ohio.

And Stark County has been an unusual target in recent years. There have been seven since 2000, but only four in the previous 50 years.

On the other hand, Summit and Portage counties are tied at 11 each since 1950, but only one and three, respectively, have occurred since 2000.

Whether 2011 will be dangerous for Ohio won’t be known for a few months. Ohio’s tornadic activity increases in May and peaks in June’s warm moist air, according to weather statistics.

But it doesn’t end there. The most recent event in the Akron-Canton area was seven months ago — Sept. 16 — when a tornado devastated the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wayne County.

Nonetheless, ”Tornado frequency in Northeast Ohio is less than say, tornado alley or Mississippi because they’re closer to the Gulf of Mexico,” said Mark Johnson, chief meteorologist for WEWS (Channel 5).

”The further north from warmth the less tornadoes you’ll have, that’s why Ohio has 16 tornadoes a year and Texas has 70,” he said.

Spotting difficult

And spotting tornadoes, according to the weather service’s Garnet, is harder in Ohio, too.

”While a tornado is a tornado, the visibility and conditions that occur oftentimes in Ohio makes them less visible to the eye,” Garnet said. ”We get a lot of humidity and haze in this part of the world during the summer, and that can obscure features within thunderstorms, like tornadoes.”

Lightning, meanwhile, is one of the least predictable threats for the region.

”Lightning can hit anywhere,” Conklin said. ”The stair-step pattern tends to find the highest point in a small area to attach to — like treetops and flagpoles are the likeliest places to be struck by lightning. When you are in an open field you are the highest point in that area.”

And there is the element of surprise: Lightning can strike up to 20 miles from where it is raining.

From 1998 to 2008, 15 Ohioans died as a result of being struck by lightning.

The National Weather Service says the odds of being struck are one in 750,000, and only 10 percent are killed.

Each spark can contain up to 100 million volts and can reach temperatures of 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The shock often results in a nervous system injury.

”Most of the time your heart stops and you get a paralyzed diaphragm,” said Greg Haum, a doctor in the emergency room at Akron General Hospital. ”The main thing an EMS could do on the scene is establish an airway. [The victim's] pupils will be fixed and dilated and you’ll think they’re dead, but they’re not. Everything is just paralyzed.”

A direct hit will sometimes leave a fern-patterned mark on the back or chest, he said.

”Usually [victims] come right back out of it, but the problem is they can die of asphyxiation because their diaphragm is paralyzed,” Haum said.

Better identification

Johnson of WEWS said that although there is no ability to predict lightning strikes, meteorologists are getting better at knowing days in advance that severe storms are likely, and as storms approach, they can identify dangerous rotation that can lead to a tornado.

Johnson also offered some advice:

• Talking on a landline telephone may be dangerous during a storm. Lines can be struck by lightning, and there have been instances in which phone users have suffered hearing damage due to the power surge. Talking on a cell phone is fine.

• Stay out of water. It is a great conductor of electricity, and if you are in a boat, you are likely to be the highest point and thus a target for lightning.

• For lightning, the buildup of static electricity can be felt. Usually, the hair on your head and arms will start to stand up — if that occurs you are very near if not in the lightning strike.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, the Akron Beacon Journal, the Canton Repository, Rubber City Radio, WYSU radio and the Youngstown Vindicator. Find out more about the NewsOutlet at http://www.thenewsoutlet.org.

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By – Courtney Thomas

Mid-American Conference university students across Ohio are paying millions of dollars to fund athletics, and chances are they’re not aware of it because there’s no indication of those charges on the student bill.
Kent State reporters called 12 MAC division schools and requested an annual budget for the athletic department and a line-item breakdown of student fees.

“All of that money goes into one general account. It’s pretty much a black hole. What’s done from there, we don’t know.” Jeff Bowman, Assistant Bursar at Toledo State University describing what happens to all the money students pay.

When a student takes a 3-credit English course at Ohio University, the student pays $144 ($46/credit) to the athletic department. Like most all universities in the MAC the athletic department at OU is funded by student fees from the academic students. Miami comes in a close second by charging $41 per hour. Akron checks in at $32 and Kent, BGSU, Buffalo and Northern Illinois are around $20 an hour.
Students pay millions of dollars a year to pay for full ride athletic scholarships. MAC universities spend more on athletic full rides than on academic full rides.

Read the full story at http://et.kent.edu/jmc40004/fees/story/thomas.htm

By JOE GIESY
TheNewsOutlet.org

WARREN — A banner shimmers across the center of the website.

Pictures of women in seductive poses line the bottom of the page.

A row of links across the top invite a further look into the Tokyo Health Spa in Warren.

The website’s “About Me” explains the Tokyo Health mission: “We take pride in being an exclusive, professional adult relaxation and massage” facility.

In the website’s gallery, women’s ages, measurements and weight are listed next to their pictures.

Other Warren parlors appear on the Internet in “sex tourism” forums that reference trips for sexual services.

Warren Police Capt. Joe Marhulik said police are aggressively investigating the 10 massage parlors licensed by the Warren City Health Department.
Trumbull County has 12 massage parlors — 10 in Warren, one in Niles and one in Newton Falls. Some of these spas are mentioned in the online “sex tourism” forums.
Websites such as www.usasexguide.info detail alleged happenings in the Warren spas.

In February, one user posted about his visit to Hot Sun Spa in Warren, saying he received oral sex there.

The sexual acts, however, often are cloaked in terms that are explained in a key on the website. “DFK” is “deep French kissing.” Other terms are far more graphic, describing everything from condomless sex acts to “Full service,” which means “intercourse.”

Richard Thompson, owner of Hot Sun Spa, declined to comment. Other spa-license owners denied that sex happens at their facilities.
Police are not so convinced, however. But the same constitutional issues and privacy laws that protect normal citizens from a police state also stymie the police investigation into spas and parlors.

The police need probable cause to get search warrants. But despite numerous complaints from community members, no one is willing to provide a written statement against any of the massage parlors.

Andrea Thompson, owner of Tokyo Spa and VIP Health Spa, said any accusations about illegal activity in her massage parlors are not true.

“Obviously, they have nothing better to do,” she said about the people making allegations about massage parlors in Warren.
Thompson said she might not know if sexual activity takes place in her spas because the massages always take place in private rooms, and she cannot always be present during operating hours. But she said all the women who work there are paid and are there of their own free will.
Thompson said she just heard of the online “sex tourism” forums recently but has not looked at them yet, and added she thinks the forums are just people joking around.

Marhulik and Warren police Sgt. John Yuricek Jr. said police are following up on complaints from community members, but it’s a long, tedious process.
Other communities have succeeded in closing massage parlors, including Liberty Township where police led a 10-year undercover investigation into massage parlors within township limits that led to the closing of several spas and the filing of 87 lewd-sexuality charges.

Yuricek said an investigation into the massage parlors would have to involve undercover police officers or confidential informants.

“The problem with that angle is it’s behind closed doors of a business,” Yuricek said. “We have our beliefs, but proving it is a whole different thing.”
Police have received at least one anonymous tip and would welcome more.

But Yuricek said someone has to come forward and make a signed and sworn statement for the police to obtain a search warrant.

“This is an established business who is licensed, who up front is going by the book. But what goes on behind closed doors might be something different,” Yuricek said.

As part of the ongoing investigation into the spas, Yuricek sometimes accompanies city health inspectors to keep an eye out for any criminal activity, which he says is unlikely to happen out in the open while he’s there.

To be compliant under the city’s health code, spas have to allow inspectors in to look around and ensure everything is up to health code. If spa workers prevent inspectors from going in, they can be cited under health codes.

Robert Pinti, city health department deputy commissioner, said massage-parlor health-inspection reports in Warren are often cleaner with fewer incidences than many of the city’s restaurants that also are subject to inspections by the department.

Pinti said his staff and police check to see if the women in the spa match the women on the licenses.

Each massage parlor in Warren must be licensed by the health department and provide licensure for each employee at the parlor, including massage technicians and any other workers.

The 10 massage parlors licensed by the Warren Health Department are Hot Sun Spa, Hong Kong Spa, Gemini Spa, Fantacy Spa, Tokyo Health Spa, Fuji Spa, VIP Health Spa, Moon Night Spa, Sunny Spa and Ocean Spa.

“Warren’s current ordinances never regulated or limited the number of massage parlors that could be operated,” Yuricek said.

Niles put the limit on number of massage parlors to one, and Warren is in the process of putting a 10-parlor cap within city limits. Marhulik said that with 10 already in existence, setting the cap any lower is problematic because it would force some spas to close.

William Nguyen, owner of Fantacy Spa, said he doesn’t think prostitution is happening around here and definitely not at Fantacy.
Seung Talk Oh, owner of Hong Kong Spa, said there is no sex at Hong Kong Spa — “just massages.”

Massage-parlor license owners Timothy Burnett, Ocean Spa; William Ketchum, Fuji Spa; James B. Foster, Gemini Spa; and Un Suk Cho, Sunny Spa, could not be reached to comment.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Wayne County resident Brett Baker graduated from the University of Akron in 2007 with a master’s degree in education. Last year, after being laid off from a charter school in Canton due to budget cuts, he became one of nearly 2,450 Ohio educators who are no longer teaching.

Baker sat anxiously with more than 700 college graduates who packed the Northeast Ohio Education job fair in Akron in March looking for a job in a shrinking job market.

“I knew getting into teaching that, in general, it was portrayed to me as very competitive,” Baker, 40, said. “My nose isn’t always in the newspapers trying to figure out how many teaching jobs there are out there. I just do the best I can.”

Video by Amanda Morrow-The News Outlet

According to the Ohio Department of Education, there are 204,190 active teaching licenses issued but only 103,952 educators in the state. What’s worse, the profession has seen a decline of 2,445 jobs since 2008.

The news comes as a shock to some who were told the education field was growing.

The 2008-2018 Ohio Job Outlook report projected a 7.5-percent increase in educational employment. However, since 2008, the number of Ohio educators has decreased two percent with 2,818 less teachers in district schools, according to Ohio Department of Education data compiled from October.

And budget cuts are looming.

As Ohio faces an $8 billion shortfall through fiscal year 2013, John Kasich’s two-year $55.5 billion budget will decrease the education budget by $2.5 billion.

“The governor made education a priority in balancing this budget,” Robert Sommers, director of 21st Century Education at the governor’s office, said, calling the education cuts modest compared to those in other departments.

The budget cuts are skewed by the loss of federal stimulus dollars that propped up many schools last year. Sommers said the state has actually increased its contribution, in spite of a shrinking overall budget. Had education, which accounts for 60 percent of government spending, been cut at the same level as other departments, the $2.5 billion cuts over the next two years would have been more like $5 billion, Sommers said.

Sommers said teaching positions are shrinking because of poor economic growth, the recession and a decrease over the past 10 years in K-12 student enrollment as more students choose charter and home schooling.

Analysis of Ohio Department of Education statistics reveals teaching positions in district and joint vocational schools decreased by nearly 3 percent since 2008, but charter schoolteachers increased by nearly 15 percent.

Under the governor’s proposed education reform, the EdChoice program, which funds students who choose to attend other districts or charter schools, will be increased from 14,000 scholarships to 60,000 scholarships in the next two years.

The budget provisions are designed to create a competitive environment where failing schools are shutdown and teachers whose students perform well are rewarded, Sommers said.

“We absolutely believe that the competitive marketplace breeds higher performance,” Sommers said.

Some schools have anticipated these budget cuts; other, less frugal schools will suffer more, Sommers said.

The cuts affect everything from filling retired teacher’s position to sending a recruiter to a job fair.

Joanne Gallagher is a coordinator in the office of career and counseling services at Youngstown State University, one of 12 colleges that connected students with employers at the Northeast Ohio Education Day.

Gallagher expected a lower than normal turnout this year, and when those usual employers didn’t show up, she called them to ask why.

“Sometimes it’s budgetary cuts; they’re not able to come to job fairs because it costs them money,” Gallagher said. “Also, they didn’t believe that ethically and in good conscience it would be fair to come and recruit students at a job fair when, at the same time, their districts might be laying off teachers.”

Still, the 67 employers present were more than expected, she said. But, by a ratio of at least 10 to one, the students outnumbered employers, many of whom had few openings.

“We have been overwhelmed by applicants,” South Euclid Lyndhurst City Schools recruiter Heath Horton said. “I have received well over 200 resumes.”

Horton’s school district, like many others, has not yet compiled a listing of vacancies for next year. But that list, Horton said, will likely pale in comparison to the applicants.

One of the hopeful applicants was Jason Clark, who drove his family three hours from outside the Columbus area to find a job. While his family waited in a hotel across the street, Clark sat in a hallway chair, resting his tired feet from the grueling job search.

“I didn’t expect this. This is more of a madhouse,” Clark, a laid off police officer of four years, said.

The recession has affected all Ohio jobs, he said.

“I went from carrying a badge to carrying a book,” Clark said, leaving the job fair with only one interview.

Clark may be up against even more candidates next year.

Sommers explained that within a year after the governor’s budget is accepted, education reforms will be proposed. One of those reforms will eliminate “restrictive licensure procedures” and allow qualified, passionate teachers who do not have a license to teach.

“The problem with the current licensure process is it does not differentiate from high quality and poor quality teachers,” Sommers said, adding that ineffectual teachers in poorly performing school district are, in fact, licensed.

“It’s just not right for a student to have to live with an ineffectual teacher,” Sommers said. “No child should ever be forced to go to a school that’s not meeting their needs.”

The budget provisions and education reforms are part of a transition to fix the economy and unemployment, Sommers said.

“Now, four years from now, if we haven’t got this fixed then we’ll take responsibility,” Sommers said, blaming previous governors and legislatures for the $8 billion projected deficit. “We think we’re gonna have it fixed. There’s gonna be more jobs in Ohio, better tax revenue … once we make it through that transition.”

While the schools and the state finalize their budgets, current teachers fear layoffs like those made to more than 700 educators in the Cleveland city school district on April 6.

As for college graduates, the state’s debt is only shadowed by their own.

Amanda Fisher will be graduating from Walsh University in May with $80,000 debt.

Fisher was told that teaching jobs would be available, but with 100,000 other licensed Ohio teachers competing in a shrinking job pool, the 23-year-old early education major is fretting about employment — and ever getting out of debt.

“It’s scary,” she said. “I’ll probably be paying my whole life, especially on a teacher’s salary.”

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Published in The Vindicator on March 25, 2011(Link)

By CHRISTOPHER COTELESSE
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

Photo by Rami Daud | The Vindicator Can Dao, owner of the Tokyo House restaurant on South Avenue, Youngstown, prepares a meal for patrons. Customers said the food is so good that they’ll wait several hours to eat the Asian cuisine. For 20 years, Dao and his wife, Hin, have owned and operated the restaurant.

It’s a cold Wednesday in a worn parking lot on Youngstown’s South Side, and several groups of people sit patiently in their cars.

Some people sit for up to two hours.

The groups occasionally eye one another from behind the windows of their vehicles, waiting for someone to make the first move.

Someone does.

A car door swings open, and it means everyone else will do the same.

They line up at the door of a dilapidated building that once was a gas station. The line on this day eventually will snake along the side of the 1907 South Ave. building that sits just a stone’s throw south of Interstate 680.

Inside is one of Youngstown’s most successful, yet best-kept, dining secrets — the Tokyo House restaurant.

People endure cold weather and two-hour waits for plum wine and teriyaki chicken prepared on a searing hibachi by Can Dao, who has owned Tokyo House for about 20 years with his wife, Hin.

Five days a week, the Vietnamese proprietors serve Japanese food on plates made in Korea. Among their ultra-loyal customers is Bryan Fullerton, who has been going to Tokyo House for about 12 years. He goes there as often as he can, but tries to get there at least once a month.

“It’s always an awesome experience when you go,” he said.

He and his friend Zach Hertel created a Facebook fan page, Can’s Tokyo House, more than a year ago, and watched it grow immediately. It has about 1,500 members and is about the only way to stay abreast of the restaurant.

It has no website of its own. Its listed telephone number is disconnected. The only way to connect to the Tokya House is through Facebook and its fan base — as evidenced by its recent closure.

For several months, the restaurant was closed as it tended to code issues with the city. When it reopened Jan. 10, it was posted on Facebook and lines that first Monday were instant.

No phone and no web page is consistent with many aspects of the place.

It starts with the pot-holed parking lot and extremely dated exterior. It continues inside with well-worn bench seats cut into the floor and covered by plain berber carpet. Just a few simple pictures hang on the mostly bare walls.

Even the cash register is low-key, and they don’t accept credit cards. The only two employees are Can and Hin.

And that is where part of the appeal starts. Customers will say that the food is one key thing about the place. But they quickly will point to Can as the other.

Officially, he’s quiet and discreet, which includes declining in-depth interviews.

“I don’t want to be famous. I just want to live,” he said.

But from 4 to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, he’s on stage behind his grills. He combines jokes and theatrics for a night of entertainment — flirting with pretty girls and creating fireballs on the grill that reach to the edge of the overhead fan. And people keep coming back.

“I have a good time with everyone here,” Can said.

“He makes it,” said customer Tim Morrow. He’s been frequenting Tokyo House about once a month for five years.

“It’s kind of like a tradition,” he said. “It’s just a great place to be and you meet a bunch of people that are crazy enough to stand outside with you.”

Often people will wait two to three hours before taking a seat, and then they wait longer while Can, the only cook, and Hin, the only server, make their way around to the six tables that each seat eight people.

Because Can doesn’t take reservations, many patrons choose to brave the cold and wait sooner rather than later, arriving shortly before the doors open.

“If you don’t, you’re going to be waiting for three hours or so. So it’s best to get here early,” Morrow said. “It’s just that good.”

Debbie Dibacco agrees.

“The food is incredible. The portions are great. It’s one of my favorite places,” she said. She added that another appeal is $6.95 for a meal she can eat for two days.

Dibacco said Can is an integral part of the experience, praising his ability to remember the names and occupations of his customers.

“He makes everybody feel welcome,” she said. She has eaten at Tokyo House regularly for almost 20 years, and plans to do so as long as the doors are open. And she’ll wait outside as long as she has to, she said.

“If I was coming here, I wouldn’t leave until I ate,” she said.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

10 years after relaunch, Youngstown Business Incubator looks back, forward

By ADAM PLANTY
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

The arrival of California’s Revere Data to the Youngstown Business Incubator makes Jim Cossler, the YBI’s chief executive and self-proclaimed “chief evangelist,” thankful in many ways, but one especially.

He now has a company besides Turning Technologies to brag about.

Revere Data’s 2009 decision to come to Youngstown has many looking at the incubator as a national contender. YBI turns 10 years old this year — well, 10 in terms of its current definition.

It actually started five years before in what Cossler calls “a dirty little secret.”

“We were an urban- renewal project disguised as an incubator,” he said.

It relaunched itself in 2000, and in 2001 helped launch Turning Technologies, which produces audience-response software.

More than $12 million in government funds later, that single launch in 10 years is what one national incubator group cites as a knock against YBI.

But those inside and outside YBI say the second decade is set to start in a dynamic way.

Zethus Software and BizVeo are two YBI companies that can be bigger than Turning, Cossler said.

“When we started the incubator, we didn’t have all the resources set in place for these companies to succeed, and Turning Technologies still did well,” Cossler said. “Now those resources are in place and these other companies can benefit from that fact.”

A new definition

It wasn’t until Cossler joined the YBI in 1998 that significant redefining of the incubator began.

The incubator was established in 1995 after the nearly century-old main building donated for the business had been renovated via $1.3 million in federal, state and local government grants.

The YBI moved away from the traditional approach of housing various kinds of companies and announced in January 2000 its decision to focus only on companies that develop software for other businesses.

Ten years since choosing its new direction, the incubator now claims a portfolio of 18 companies, led by Turning Technologies. Turning first joined the incubator in 2001. It was ranked by Inc. Magazine in 2007 as the country’s fastest-growing software company and posted sales of $34 million in 2009.

Betty Jo Licata, dean of the Williamson College of Business Administration at Youngstown State University and YBI board member since 1995, is happy with the incubator’s accomplishments.

“The YBI has served as a catalyst for developing Youngstown’s reputation as one of the top 10 cities in the country to start a business, according to Entrepreneur magazine,” she said.

YBI helps startup businesses by providing them free utilities and office space while companies focus on developing products and services. Once the companies have remained profitable for an extended period of time, they are expected to pay rent for their office space, albeit at a hefty discount.

Space-time-money

The YBI has received more than $12 million in various grants for construction and operational costs over the 15-year span. It operates on a yearly budget of $700,000. Half a million dollars of that comes from the government in the form of grants, while the rest is a mix of private donations and rental income.

The average salary of the roughly 230 jobs at the incubator is $57,000, including Turning Technologies, which now resides in the $6 million Taft Center downtown and pays rent to the incubator.

The Taft Center connects the original YBI building with its other property, the Semple Building.

The three buildings establish a significant presence on West Federal Street, placing the expanding tech campus directly in the shadow of one of the oldest buildings in Youngstown, the Home Savings and Loan building.

The Semple Building was renovated using $1.8 million in federal funds and houses the Youngstown office of San Francisco-based business Revere Data.

While 10 employees are in the offices now, Revere CEO Kevin O’Brien said as many as 100 could be working there in two years. The building is about 40 percent leased, but the incubator hopes to have it filled within a year.

“The YBI, because of its size, can afford to take the time to allow businesses to mature, which is fortunate for them,” said Dinah Adkins, former president of National Business Incubator Association.

“The issue is that once a company grows, it needs the space to do so. Youngstown is ensuring that space is not a problem,” said Adkins.

The NBIA, based in Athens, Ohio, estimates that in 2005, business incubators supported more than 27,000 startup companies providing full-time employment to more than 100,000 workers, generating more than $17 billion in annual revenue.

The NBIA also points to research showing that every dollar of federal funds devoted to an incubator generates about $30 in local tax revenue.

Linda Knopp, the NBIA director of news and information, said that the YBI is below average for the number of companies it’s created.

“But it’s doing well in total sales,” she said. “The average combined client revenue for all the incubators in the United States in 2006 was $16.1 million.”

Turning posted sales of $20.6 million in 2006, single-handedly putting the YBI ahead of other incubators throughout the country.

The tech community

YBI companies are expected to help one another with no expectation of payment beyond having the favor returned when they need a helping hand.

“It’s one of those open-door things, where we’re in a planning meeting and something comes up. We can walk out the door, head upstairs and knock on Zethus’ door and say, ‘Hey come on in, what can we help you with?’” said Alex Milne, BizVeo co-founder and senior vice president of sales and marketing.

“You can’t put a dollar value on that.”

Tony DeAscentis was one of the first employees hired at Turning. He stayed with the company until there were more than 100 employees. Now he’s serving as the CEO of BizVeo and looking to recreate the successful environment he spent years working in.

“We hope that Tony does for BizVeo what he did for Turning,” Cossler said. BizVeo develops specialized streaming video to share information.

DeAscentis is aware of the expectations for him, but said that the downtown area lends itself well to maintaining a good atmosphere for the company.

“Turning, BizVeo, the incubator itself — people like having access to all the stuff downtown,” he said. DeAscentis occasionally meets his son, a junior at Kent State University, for lunch at local establishments such as the Lemon Grove Caf .

The collaboration extends beyond West Federal, too.

BizVeo has been testing its product with St. Elizabeth Health Care Center. It’s worked out well for both organizations, but it’s been extremely beneficial for BizVeo.

“The Humility of Mary Health Partners has signed an annual contract to use our technology,” Milne said. “It’s our first contract, and we’re very excited to have acquired them as clients.”

Selling Youngstown, Warren

The Lemon Grove opened in August of last year and is one of the businesses taking advantage of being so close in downtown Youngstown.

Owner Jacob Harver said the cafe gets enough business from larger companies such as Turning Technologies that it’s worth his time to try and entice them to his establishment on a regular basis.

“I’m thinking of starting ‘Turning Tuesdays’ or something like that where we would offer Turning employees a discount for eating here that day,” he said.

The YBI is doing much to benefit the city’s image, said Mayor Jay Williams.

“The YBI has emerged and continues to be an integral part of the renaissance of the economy of Youngstown,” he said.

The YBI has done well enough that the city of Warren has begun the process of establishing its own incubator targeted at alternative-energy technologies. U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles, D-17th, said last year that he believes the incubator will be a great establishment in Warren, and points to the YBI as proof that the Warren Energy Incubator can succeed.

“Statistics show that 87 percent of companies that started out in an incubator are still in operation four years later, compared to 44 percent that start outside of an incubator,” Ryan said in announcing the Warren project.

What’s Next?

After roughly $12 million in renovations and expansions, there is still plenty of room for growth.

“Youngstown is fortunate because not all incubators have space available around their area for expansion,” the NBIA’s Knopp said.

In the 2011 transportation appropriations bill working its way through the U.S. House of Representatives, $700,000 has been targeted for YBI to help it expand to a vacant building on Boardman Street. That is where BizVeo would relocate.

Ultimately, growing companies is the primary purpose of the incubator.

In choosing which ideas to bring into the building, Cossler believes it’s important for people to be willing to relinquish a measure of their vision.

“We want people to love their ideas, just don’t marry them,” he said.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU Radio and The Vindicator.

Hockey takes backseat to football in fans’ hearts by The News Outlet

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By CHRIS COTELESSE
NewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN — The squared borders of Wick Park provide a defined routine and world for Steve Hiet.

With winter’s end in sight, he’ll again become a regular face in the park.

As unofficial groundskeeper, he gains a measure of fulfillment by keeping Wick Park safe and by picking up trash.

“It’s good for people to have a nice, clean place to bring their family,” he said.

Steve Heit’s delusions revolve around an epic war in the late 20th century where God and Satan gathered their soldiers for the final showdown.

When he’s not looking out for trash, Steve is looking out for the enemy — and that’s where two worlds collide for him and for those around him.

He’s been diagnosed as schizo-affective, a disease that combines the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia with the irregular personality of a mood disorder.

His delusions revolve around an epic war in the late 20th century where God and Satan gathered their soldiers for the final showdown.

The good guys lost.

To Steve, most people are “death creatures,” the demonic army now exercising dominion over the Earth.

His face hides behind a long, unkempt mostly gray beard. His eyes scan everyone in range, anticipating an enemy that could manifest at any moment.

“They forced me to fight on Satan’s side when they murdered all the Christians and stuff in Armageddon,” Steve said.

He is one of 3,736 people who received mental-health services from Turning Point Counseling in 2009, a fraction of the 13,830 treated by the Mahoning County Mental Health Board.
Steve’s life is similar to those thousands of lives. He lives in an apartment near Wick operated by The Burdman Group.

Tom Arens is Burdman’s behavioral health program director and has known Steve for more than 15 years. He and Steve’s dad, Clark Hiet, have the most routine contact with Steve and allowed a unique glimpse into his two worlds.

William D Lewis/The Vindicator Stephen Hiet, RIGHT, and his father Clark Hiet of Springfield Township walk through Wick Park in Youngstown. Hiet is one of 3,736 people who received mental-health services from Turning Point Counseling in 2009.

Those competing worlds have distanced most others from Steve. But Tom and Clark see beyond that.

“I think he’s got the capacity to work in some sort of limited way,” Arens said. “He’s a bright guy, and I’ve seen him work.”
Stephen was born Dec. 1, 1966, to Clark and Sandra Hiet at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Youngstown. The youngest of two girls and two boys, he was favored by his mother.

“If he wanted shrimp, he got shrimp to eat and the rest ate a can of macaroni,” Clark said. “He was a spoiled child.”

Clark said Steve also was the most intelligent of all his children.

“He could read everything — even the newspaper — when he was 5 years old,” Steve’s stepmother, Sharon said.

He often skipped class, but was able to achieve success when he wanted.

He’d “grab the book before, and read a little bit, and ace it. Then he just decided the next time he didn’t want to do it, so he didn’t. So they flunked him.” Clark said.

Steve attended Springfield Local High School and laughs at the memories.

“I just barely graduated. I goofed off and smoked weed,” he said.

The sun glared in his face, and he held up a thin, sinewy forearm to block the light. A full smile pulled at the deep wrinkles around his eyes.
He talked about continuing an education through mail-order courses and taking a job at a Columbiana factory.
“They put a damn projector thing in my head. They trained me all that government engineering stuff to which I could go to work in that foundry. Armageddon in the foundry,” he said.
The two worlds have no boundaries for Steve. It’s all the same to him.
“He likes delusions better than reality,” Sharon said.
Agents of the U.S. government, which he calls “the bosses,” forced him to work in the factory, making tanks and nuclear bombs for the host of Hell.
Steve said he escaped and retaliated against the forces of evil, claiming a body count of 350,000 CIA agents.
He said “the bosses” have been watching him and limiting his movement ever since.
Though he often can be seen on his North Side walks, the winter keeps him indoors more than he would like.
Steve is in an apartment just off Wick Park. His expenses are paid with income from Social Security. He doesn’t need full-time care but is near assistance if it is needed.
“I’ve got to believe he benefits from just the feeling that he’s not isolated,” Arens said. He said restlessness is common for patients such as Steve. And his wanderings have given him an added purpose.

“He’s kind of a character in this neighborhood,” Arens said.

The chapters in his life are ongoing interruptions.

Debbie Aeppli married Steve before he was diagnosed. They had a baby girl, Danielle. She hasn’t seen him since she was 10 years old. She is now 21 and lives near Atlanta and attends college.

“I really do not know anything about him,” Danielle said.

The marriage dissolved after Steve’s first major episode.

Soon after Danielle was born, Steve’s delusions emerged, and paranoia had gotten the best of him. He climbed into a tree and shot at the planes in the sky.

His brother, Michael, came to talk him down, and Steve aimed a loaded shotgun at his head, and instead filled Michael’s radiator with buckshot.

“He couldn’t have missed,” Clark said. “He was too good with a gun.”

Steve was committed to psychiatric care.

Debbie filed for divorce. Michael doesn’t speak to his brother anymore; same for their sister, Donna. Both still live in the Mahoning Valley. A sister, Joan, died of cancer when she was 14.

Other than mental-health professionals and fellow patients, Steve’s only regular contact is his father and stepmother.

Even his mother, now Sandra Curl and living in Texas, who doted on his every want and need, is afraid of Steve after he threatened her.

Clark said Steve has never hurt anyone and doesn’t expect any danger from his son.

“I don’t think he could do it,” Clark said. “Of course, there’s always a first time.”

“It’s not fair to say mentally ill people are dangerous. Anyone who is paranoid is potentially dangerous,” Arens said. “You got about two-thirds of the people that, with the right treatment, can pretty much blend in to society.”

Steve is part of the other third. His grizzled appearance distinguishes him as part of the wayward masses that inhabit the city and haunt its parks.

Arens has hope for Steve to move himself into the ranks of the functional.
Steve isn’t completely engulfed in the war in his mind. There is a portion of the person he used to be hiding underneath the psychosis.
He can be lucid and rational when talking about subjects such as his daughter or mother. But he just as easily slips into his apocalyptic nightmares.
“It’s like you can see that there’s a light back there if you could turn it on,” Clark said.

“We can try to inspire him. We can try to talk to him,” Arens said.

Ultimately, people in Steve’s situation must take medications and comply with treatment. With effort, his condition could improve, but he’ll always be symptomatic.

“You don’t get cured from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder,” Arens said.

Local park provides semblance of order to Steve’s World by The News Outlet

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The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

E-readers changing book habits by The News Outlet

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As cities across the country tighten their belts during tough financial times, budget cuts will alter staffing for each city’s planning department. With looming budget cuts in Ohio, Youngstown administrators, who will unveil the 2011 budget next week, are forced to choose between hiring city planners and hiring police officers. NewsOutlet reporter Doug Livingston has the story.

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By DAN POMPILI
TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN — A house on Illinois Avenue is filled with more hope than usual these days.

While the Ohio Department of Health is pursuing injunctions to close the beleaguered House of Hope, some community members are rallying around the troubled adult-care facility.

Immediately after The Vindicator published a series of articles in January chronicling the home’s recent trials and tribulations, Pastor Roy Barnett and Bruce Paulette of Ohio Valley Teen Challenge contacted the facility’s administrators with an offer to help.

Teen Challenge was also the subject of a Vindicator series last fall.

“It only takes one to get involved and make a difference,” said Barnett, the executive director of the faith-based drug-treatment program. In recent weeks, Teen Challenge has sent many of its 48 resident volunteers the two blocks from the corner of Florencedale Avenue and Broadway to House of Hope, 115 Illinois Ave., to clean and paint much of the first floor.

As a result, the dining area is now bright and welcoming. Bathrooms, pictured as dilapidated in photos taken during November and December inspections, are also under renovation.

William D Lewis/The Vindicator Charlene Crissman, administrator and part owner of House of Hope, stands in the kitchen of her facility in Youngstown.

Teen Challenge advisory board member Budd Brothers also sits on the newly formed board of directors for House of Hope. The board was formed about two weeks ago, when House of Hope determined it would convert to a nonprofit organization. Currently only Brothers and Paulette sit on the board, but administrators say the formation is ongoing.

By switching from a limited liability company to nonprofit status, House of Hope will be eligible to apply for grants and financial aid for which they do not now qualify.

Lisa Lloyd, administrator and co-director of care, said the home isn’t making a profit anyway, so the new plan makes the most sense to get the House of Hope the help it needs.

Brothers has donated an eight-burner stove to the facility, and he and Paulette provided an updated freezer, three ovens, new steam tables and new food trays for the home. Though not all the equipment is new, it is all in good condition and an improvement over what the home had previously. Paulette estimated the donations are worth between $5,000 and $6,000.

“If [the ODH] will just back off for a little bit and give us some time,” Brothers said, “they’ll see the residents will have everything they need there to make it a first-class act.”

Photo by William D. Lewis/TheVindicator A bathroom in the House of Hope sports its new look.

Lloyd said since Teen Challenge got involved, the home’s administrators are less worried.

“It’s like a peace has come over the building,” she said.

Brothers and Teen Challenge are not the home’s only advocates.

City Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st, spoke to the legal department at the Ohio Department of Health on Feb. 14 to ask for more time for the home to make corrections.

“I want them to have a fair chance as long as they’re doing what they need to do,” Gillam said.

Gillam expressed concerns over the condition of the mental-health care system since the closing of Woodside Receiving Hospital for the mentally ill in 1999. Some of House of Hope’s residents are former Woodside patients.

“If they don’t follow the rules, then they should be shut down,” Gillam said. “But if they have new people, they should be given a chance” to make corrections.

Lloyd said the facility is asking the state to give them sufficient time to implement changes.

“We’ve made so many improvements, but they’re not even giving us a chance,” she said. “Everyone is portraying us as slumlords, and we’re not.”

Lloyd said House of Hope has had the operation license since August 2010, when it was transferred from Bryson Manor owner Robert Van Sickle. The facility was overdue for investment and improvements when they took over.

Barnett said the facility has improved under the new ownership. He used to visit the home in the late 1990s when he worked for Biomedical Labs in Liberty, and the home was still called Bryson Manor. He said back then the home smelled like smoke and he observed little supervision.

Owner/Administrator Charlene Crissman provided copies of eight letters of support written by family members of residents and health professionals with patients living at House of Hope. The letters argue that closing the home would be “a disaster” for the residents and the community.

Since January, however, Lloyd said families or case workers have removed 14 residents from the home. They estimate the financial impact at about $12,000 to $14,000 per month, while many operating costs remain essentially the same.

Crissman and Paulette said the payroll cost comprises the largest percentage of expenses, though they would not release specific numbers. Paulette attacked the state health department’s contention the facility is inadequately staffed.

That contention was included in recent correspondence with the home, including a Feb. 3 letter informing Crissman of the state’s plan to revoke House of Hope’s license

Lloyd said they keep two caregivers on shift at all times and have added one more to the midnight shift. She said all her staffers are trained in first aid and CPR, a fact House of Hope lawyer James J. Leo included in his appeal letter to the state.

Staffing, however, is not the state’s only complaint against the home. The ODH has charged that various conditions within the home constitute a “real and present danger” to the residents. Lloyd and Crissman disagree.

The two administrators say the state’s case against them began in early 2009 when Bryson Manor won a decision in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court after ODH nearly revoked the license.

Crissman said she knew the state health department would “come after us with everything they’ve got.” Since then the home has been cited repeatedly for minor infractions, she said.

Among the citations listed as evidence of “real and present danger” at the home, an inspector found lighter fluid in a resident’s room and deemed it a safety violation. The state specifically ordered House of Hope to confiscate the lighter fluid.

Lloyd and Crissman, however, said the investigator could not tell them for certain if they could legally take a resident’s personal property.

“When do we go over the line of their rights?” Lloyd asked. “They do have rights … and now we’re treating them like they’re in jail.”

John Saulitis, an ombudsman for Area Agency on Aging 11 and an outspoken critic of the facility, said residents need to be treated as individuals.

“It is contingent on an assessment of the person,” he said. “Are they a safe smoker?”

Saulitis said he successfully fought a facility that attempted to evict a resident for refusing to surrender his lighter and cigarettes. In that case, the resident was determined to exhibit safe-smoking behavior and could not be forced to surrender personal property.

Lloyd said the state has taken the case of a small can of lighter fluid for a patient’s lighter “way too far.”

Ultimately, both administrators said, it comes down to their residents. The 46 residents who remain have been upset and are questioning administrators about the home’s future.

“The residents have been in tears about ‘Will we have a home?’” Lloyd said. “We’re trying to assure them we’re not [going to] close.”

Lisa Solley, also an ombudsman for Area Agency on Aging 11, said House of Hope’s recent efforts deserve acknowledgment but do not solve all the facility’s problems.

“I applaud their efforts to try to improve the facility, and I hope that continues,” she said. “But I think [the case] goes beyond cosmetic issues, and I hope they improve the problems with staffing and the health and safety issues.”

Saulitis said the problems at the home are serious and the state’s case should not be taken lightly.

“A finding of real and present danger does not happen very often. It’s as serious as it gets,” he said.

Still, Crissman said the men from Teen Challenge are the home’s saving grace.

“They’ve stepped up above and beyond. It’s like a rebirth,” she said.

Paulette said he has roofers living in the Teen Challenge residence who plan to assess roof damage. They also plan to completely renovate the landscaping around the house.

Barnett said he and his men are proud to be helping the home.

“These people have the same drive as Ohio Valley Teen Challenge,” he said. “We’re here trying to help people.”

No actions have been taken yet in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, where ODH has filed an injunction to close the home.

Tess Pollock, a public relations officer with ODH, said a phone conference is scheduled Friday, during which a date will be set for the administrative hearing on House of Hope’s license revocation.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists.

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By Melinda Gray
The NewsOutlet

As a pot of tomato sauce cooked on the stove in the kitchen of his small restaurant, Joe Marsco looked down Belmont Avenue toward the Brier Hill neighborhood where he learned to cook.

Marsco, owner of Joe Restaurant, said he learned more than how to cook in that old Italian neighborhood.

“I learned about life there — about what really mattered — about family and doing what’s right,” he said.

As he described his Brier Hill childhood, he reminisced about stopping at as many houses as he could to eat Sunday dinners with neighbors in what he called “the greatest neighborhood of all time.”

The Brier Hill neighborhood has since declined, but former residents, including Marsco, have been working to preserve some aspects of the former neighborhood and way of life.

Their latest battle has been with officials of the Diocese of Youngstown, who had been discussing plans to merge or close St. Anthony’s Church, a Brier Hill landmark.

Brier Hill, between Belmont Avenue and the U.S. Route 422 corridor between Liberty and Girard, was once known as Youngstown’s “Little Italy” district because of the number of Italian immigrants who moved to the neighborhood to work in the steel mills.

“Many [immigrants] knew each other,” said Marsco. “Brier Hill represented a new beginning for them. A chance to make it in the United States.”

Marsco said he and other Brier Hill loyalists worked hard to convince diocese officials to keep the church in the neighborhood open for at least another year or two.

In 1957, St. Anthony Church was established in the center of the neighborhood. The church membership grew, and officials added a school with a large gymnasium, library and banquet hall.

Brier Hill resident Theresa Polovischak, 83, said she attended St. Anthony’s every day. She said she remembers when the church and neighborhood were crowded with people and how bingo and generous parishioners helped pay for the church.

“The community of Brier Hill had a saying: ‘One hand helps the other,’” Polovischak said. “And every resident strived to live by that.”

In late 2009, the Diocese of Youngstown announced plans to close and consolidate some of its churches, and St. Anthony’s was considered vulnerable.

The diocese cited a decrease in availability of priests among other factors as a cause for its proposed mergers and closings of local churches.

Instead of closing St. Anthony’s, the diocese chose to merge the church with Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church near downtown.

The decision not only saved the oldest Italian parish in Mahoning County but also gave Brier Hill advocates hope for a new future.

“All of the parishes have two years to implement the program and come up with a plan for the mergers,” said Father Nick Shori, head of the Youngstown Diocese’s reorganization project.

“The most important question is to determine a Mass schedule that one priest can handle,” Shori said.

Also important is figuring out which buildings to close and which are structurally sound and worth investment, Shori said.

“We will not let any of the buildings be used for anything that is not consistent with the history of that place,” Shori said.

Diocese officials will also decide whether to sell or demolish them. Any property not sold will remain in the hands of the diocese.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists at Youngstown State University.

By DAN POMPILI
The NewsOutlet

YOUNGSTOWN
The state has asked a judge to shutter the House of Hope adult- care facility and relocate its residents.
The Ohio Department of Health filed a request Tuesday with Mahoning County Common Pleas Court seeking a court order to close the facility on Illinois Avenue.
The filing comes on the heels of a Dec. 22, 2010, order from then ODH Director Dr. Alvin Jackson preventing House of Hope from accepting any new clients, an order the facility is still fighting.
“We will continue to fight anybody who tries to stop us,” said Hope owner and Director of Care Michael Binder.
Binder declined to comment further but said administrators were meeting to discuss the court filing.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed a memorandum in support of ODH, requesting a preliminary injunction and an immediate hearing.
“The residents of House of Hope Center have a right to be in a facility that provides them with a safe and secure environment,” DeWine wrote in his memorandum. “The existence of the real and present dangers undermine the safety and security due these residents.”
After an investigation into a resident’s death and a site inspection that revealed safety violations, the Ohio Department of Health issued the letter that warned House of Hope that unless remedies were taken, the state would seek to close the facility.
The inspection had revealed “the facility failed to take reasonable precautions to ensure the safety of all residents when permitting residents to smoke cigarettes,” finding that residents smoked in non-designated areas, and one resident smoked and kept lighter fluid in his room.
The letter instructed House of Hope not to admit new residents, implement smoking policies, increase staffing and then submit a plan of correction by Jan. 5, 011.
A letter to the Department of Health from House of Hope’s attorney, James J. Leo of Galena, Ohio, asserted that his client had complied with all criteria, except hiring new staff and that the current staff met with Ohio Revised Code standards.
However, a Jan. 11 site inspection – just days after a series of stories by The Vindicator revealing troubles at the House of Hope – showed “conditions continued to exist that constitute a real and present danger to the residents,” namely that lighter fluid remained in the resident’s room and the facility still was not monitoring the residents’ smoking habits, according to the filing.
The early January series addressed Michael Lambert’s Nov. 11 death in a bathtub at the facility, and chronic unsafe and unsanitary conditions that have led to state actions against it in recent years, including a failed attempt to close the facility in early 2009.
Citing 18 specific violations — five relating to the death of Lambert — Tuesday’s filing also details new incidents at the facility.
On Jan, 9, a male resident assaulted a female resident, splitting her chin open, then stole her purse and fled the home. The state cited that as proof that inadequate supervision remains a concern.
On Feb. 1, Acting ODH Director Karen Hughes sent a letter to House of Hope Administrator Charlene Crissman notifying her of the state’s intent to revoke the license.
The letter advises House of Hope of its right to request an administrative hearing with ODH to dispute the revocation order.
The case related to Tuesday’s filing will be heard by Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Lou A. D’Apolito, who had taken no action as of late Tuesday.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists.

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By Doug Livingston
thenewsoutlet.org

Ohio Valley Teen Challenge executive director Roy Barnett was invited to a recent fundraiser at Pleasant Valley Church in Niles.

“It was just a normal Sunday morning service,” Pleasant Valley Pastor John Weisman said, but Barnett “had no idea what was about to happen.”

As Barnett sat with the congregation, a wheelbarrow was pushed to the front of the pews, filled with money from church members and then counted. The tally was projected on a screen as the opening theme to “2001: A Space Odyssey” filled the air.

The wheelbarrow’s collections, along with funds raised in the prior two days, totaled more than $37,000. The church wrote that dollar amount on a check and handed it to Barnett, no strings attached.

“He was speechless,” Weisman said.

Barnett and the staff at OVTC “are a crazy bunch of risk takers,” Weisman said, “but we believe in what they were doing as a vital part of the community.”

The Vindicator and TheNewsOutlet.org collaborated on a seven-part series in November that showcased the fledgling rehabilitation center that opened in March 2008 just off Wick Park on Youngstown’s North Side. As a result of the series, the new year looks brighter for OVTC.

Barnett had been praying for $35,000 to expand the kitchen and catering services at the Florencedale Avenue center, which provides faith-based residential drug and alcohol treatment for men.

He now has $2,000 to spare.

“We’ve been a year ahead almost of everything,” Barnett said of the accomplishments of OVTC.

They never imagined housing 40-some men at the center within two years.

They never imagined having to tell businesses and organizations that they are too busy to take on another job. The work program is publicized by word of mouth. They’re afraid to advertise because of the overwhelming workload.

Barnett and other officials are willing to take on more work, but the center can only house 48 men to staff the work program.

“We need at least an 80-man facility right now,” Barnett said.

OVTC’s web site is an indication of the increased support it has received from the community. The site was recently down. When Roy’s wife Cathy, an administrator at OVTC, called the web site provider to ask what the problem was, she was told the volume of visitors was too high.

“I guess that’s a good thing, right?” she laughed.

More bandwidth was supplied to keep up with all the donations and online visitors.

The $37,000 donation from Pleasant Valley was used to purchase $11,000 in kitchen equipment from the Mahoning-Youngstown Community Action Partnership, which is experiencing budget cuts that have hindered its ability to help Youngstown’s needy. An additional $12,500 secured the first and last months’ rent as well as a security deposit for the 4,000-square-foot kitchen formerly run by MYCAP.

OVTC is picking up where MYCAP left off.

“Our food services doubled with the contract,” OVTC board member Bruce Paulette said.

Sitting in Barnett’s office, director of operations Bob Pavlich throws a fatigued arm into the air and exclaims, “One week. We’ve made it.”

In that first week of December, Pavlich was referring to the men at OVTC who cooked and shipped more than 1,300 meals a day from breakfasts and lunches to snacks. The meals were sent to children in the Youngstown Area Community Action Center Head Start preschools, to other children and the elderly through Heart Reach Ministries and to the troubled youth of Safehouse Ministries Inc., which is housed in the same building as OVTC.

OVTC is constructing a cafeteria for Safehouse residents at the center.

Officials are also excited to announce their plans to open a women’s residential facility in Youngstown. The center on Florencedale Avenue houses only men. The plan, originally budgeted for 2012, is being pushed up a year.

Officials are sitting down with prospective investors in January and February to seek funding to purchase certain properties in Youngstown that have recently become available. Though no exact location has been determined, they said they are proud to announce that construction of a women’s facility will begin next year.

Support groups will also be available next year.

Starting this month, families who are struggling with a loved one under the influence of drugs and alcohol can meet at the Wick Park center for a weekly support group. Another meeting will take place weekly for those personally battling with drug addiction.

Two other support groups, one in Trumbull County and another in Columbiana County, are also expected to open this year.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Area Agency on AGING 11 Special to the Vindicator. This bathroom, also photographed Dec. 15, shows broken and unclean fixtures. Area Agency on Aging 11 provided The Vindicator with the photos, shot to augment the state’s monitoring of the facility.

Published in The Vindicator on January 9, 2011(Link)

By Dan Pompili
The NewsOutlet

YOUNGSTOWN

The incident report details a confusing sequence of events: Three men. Perhaps a sexual advance. A bathtub. Maybe a fight. Then a call to 911.

The Youngstown Police Department is still trying to sort out exactly what happened in the minutes before Michael Lambert was found dead Nov. 11, 2010, in a bathtub at a facility that was supposed to keep him safe.

Police are still waiting on the Mahoning County coroner to determine if Lambert’s death was a homicide or an accident.

The death is the latest episode in what has been a troubled history of a home for mentally impaired adults. House of Hope, formerly Bryson Manor, 115 Illinois Ave., was once affiliated with two now-shuttered residential mental-health facilities on the city’s North Side: Covington House and Illinois Manor.

Area Agency on AGING 11 Special to the Vindicator. This photo of an empty fire extinguisher box was shot Nov. 30, 2010.

Over the years, state and local officials have investigated two deaths, two rapes and numerous abuses that have occurred at the homes. Fights, thefts and consistently poor state-inspection reports also plagued the facilities.

Owner Robert Van Sickle closed Covington House and Illinois Manor in July 2007. But Hope, which opened in 1993 as Bryson, remains open after being acquired by its former administrator and two others in January 2010. Today it is still home to about 55 people with impairments such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

One Mahoning Valley official who oversees living conditions of more than 150 area homes and facilities said he thinks House of Hope is no better now than when it was named Bryson Manor.

“What we see, year in and year out with this facility, is … the deplorable environmental conditions, the unclean, the unsafe environment, the risk of abuse, the risk of sexual abuse, the risk of physical exploitation,” said John Saulitis, an ombudsman with Area Agency on Aging 11, a public-private partnership that uses public funds to oversee senior services in Ashtabula, Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties.

“We can’t tell you where [mental health patients] should live,” said Saulitis, a longtime critic of the facility. “What we can tell you is where they shouldn’t live.”

A challenging business

Hope has a difficult job: helping those society has cast out and whose complicated psychological disorders make their lives difficult.

Saulitis said the problem with places such as Hope and many nursing homes he is charged with overseeing is that there are few punitive measures, if any, to police the facilities.

“If there is no sanction short of revoking the license, such as fines or penalties, then you have to ask why this is allowed to continue,” Saulitis said.

The Ohio Department of Health revoked Bryson Manor’s license in 2009 for a series of sanitary and procedural failures. The facility was never closed, however, because Magistrate Timothy Welsh of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court overruled the state finding against Bryson.

Welsh ruled that due process was denied for Bryson because the state presented to the examiner parts of its inspection findings from all of 2008 even though it told Bryson it would present only November 2008 inspection results.

The Ohio Department of Health is again after the facility for safety and sanitary violations. The state gave House of Hope officials until Dec. 6 to address problems cited in a Sept. 21 inspection.

House of Hope’s petition for an extension of that deadline was rejected. On Dec. 22, Dr. Alvin Jackson, director of the Ohio Department of Health, notified House of Hope administrators that “conditions exist that constitute a real and present danger.” He cited:

The facility “failed to provide adequate supervision to ensure a safe living environment” in the case of Lambert’s death.

The staff failed to intervene when a resident was seen with cigarettes and lighter fluid in his room, and there were no procedures to monitor unsafe behavior by residents who smoke.

Jackson warned if improvements were not made by Jan. 5, he intended to seek injunctive relief — a filing with the common-pleas court — to close the facility and transfer its residents elsewhere.

Jackson also prohibited House of Hope from admitting any new residents until the state’s requirements are satisfied.

Jackson’s office confirmed last week that House of Hope complied with the Jan. 5 deadline with a “plan of correction.”

“We are now reviewing it,” Tessie Pollock, the department’s public-information officer, said Thursday. “It will not be public record until the review process is done.”

Hope’s administrators, Charlene Crissman and Lisa Lloyd, said they have worked to improve the facility since taking over ownership, but the battle has been uphill, citing financial difficulties and the nature of their residents.

“This is not a money-making business,” Lloyd said.

“You have to have a heart for mental-health patients,” Crissman said. “And I can say for certain that is one thing that myself, Lisa and [co-owner] Michael [Binder] have in common.”

Crissman, who served as the administrator of Bryson Manor when it was owned by Van Sickle; Lloyd and Binder acquired the business from Van Sickle at no cost and began operating it in January 2010, although Van Sickle remained the business’s legal owner until August.

Crissman said the building was in foreclosure, which they were unaware of until a mailed notification arrived. They acted quickly to buy the tax liens on the facility to save it, she said. Church groups, private donors and the owners’ personal funds paid the necessary bills to keep the facility operating.

The foreclosure is on hold, and tax payments are current, according to the Mahoning County treasurer’s office.

Records show challenges

Sean and Alan Courtright have mixed feelings about the care their 47-year-old brother received at Bryson, where he died.

Robin Courtright, 47, was the previous death at Bryson before Lambert. Courtright died in 2007 awaiting a transfer to a skilled-care facility where he could receive oxygen and some medical care, reports say. The coroner’s report says he died of natural causes from his illness.

Alan Courtwright said he blames Hope for what he said was his brother’s premature death, saying he had a “fear the whole time he was there.”

Sean Courtright said Bryson staff members were loving and supportive.

“If I had any suspicions, I would say as much. I don’t,” Sean Courtright said.

Police, court and state inspection records reveal signs of trouble at the facility and other group homes affiliated with the former owner of House of Hope:

In March 2007, a resident was strangled at Illinois Manor.

The former human-resources manager for Bryson was fired in 2008 amid allegations of “improper employee-resident contact and interaction.”

Police have been called to the facilities several times each week for years to investigate fights, missing people and thefts. In 2010, between May 9 and Sept. 12, there were 76 calls to 911 for help from House of Hope residents and staff.

“These places are supposed to provide quality of life,” Saulitis said, questioning whether living conditions meet even a “minimum standard of care.”

Crissman said Saulitis’ comments are off base. She added that state inspectors have been overly critical in what they cite on the regular survey inspections.

“We can’t pass a survey to save our life, but it’s not for lack of trying,” Crissman said.

The challenges at Hope, according to various police and state records, have been many and varied.

In some cases, Hope’s residents are drug addicts and system abusers who, despite their mental disabilities, are still clever enough to manipulate police and medical-emergency responders to feed their habits, police reports show.

According to a Sept. 18 police report, one Hope resident confided to an ambulance driver that he stages fits to get transported to the hospital so he can obtain drugs for a “recreational purpose.”

The police officer who wrote the incident report was frustrated with the Hope resident: “He is rapidly exhausting the resources of police, paramedics and hospitals. If these activities are not halted, I believe that another entity that may truly need emergency services may be made to wait while our limited resources are squandered.”

In other cases, fights have erupted between residents and staff, with staff sometimes on the losing end.

A resident assaulted a social worker in April 2008 when she attempted to clean the resident’s room. When Crissman arrived to assist the social worker, the resident punched Crissman and sprayed her in the face with a cleaning solution.

Crissman said they had attempted to have the resident removed from the residence months earlier, but that Saulitis fought them through an appeal process, forcing them to keep the resident in the facility.

She said she found it curious Saulitis would appeal a removal if he were so opposed to housing mental-health clients at Hope.

Saulitis said there are certain regulations in place that prevent arbitrary evictions, and he was only ensuring due process to protect the resident’s rights.

After the assault, administrators were finally able to have the resident removed through legal channels.

There also have been thefts at the facility. Some of them were personal property, such as a laptop computer from a resident’s room.

Issues with training, staffing

Staffing and training have been targeted by the state as concerns at Hope.

The facility maintains 17 staffers, with at least two caregivers on duty at all times, Crissman said. The other staff members include three kitchen workers, two maintenance workers, two housekeeping workers and one newly hired dietitian. Visiting nurses, physicians, psychologists and bath aides also come to offer services to some residents.

All of these services are paid through residents’ Medicare and Medicaid.

According to Ohio Department of Health inspection reports, Hope was cited as recently as June for failing to ensure continuing education for administration and staffers. It also failed to ensure appropriate training in first aid, mental-health care, emergency and disaster procedures and dietary and nutrition practices, the state said.

Crissman and Lloyd, a licensed practical nurse, have extensive nursing-home experience: Crissman for 10 years before working at Bryson, and Lloyd for 22 years between nursing homes and prison health systems.

Crissman has no college degree in mental-health care. But she said she maintains her continuing-education requirements necessary for certification, as required by Ohio laws.

Crissman said she is pleased with her staff.

Staff turnover used to be constant, but “the staff we have now is the best I’ve seen in the 10 years since I’ve been here,” she said.

Questions have been raised about staff ability, however.

One Youngstown police officer, in a July 10 report, chastised a House of Hope staff member for inappropriate actions and comments during a dispute with a resident.

“The actions and comments made by the … staff worker … were unprofessional and severely hampered our ability to resolve this issue. This person seemed to feel that if there were any client that disagreed with how care is rendered to them that the police should either arrest or remove these clients at [staff’s] request,” the officer wrote.

Melissa Novits, a city health department nurse, has been a critic of Youngstown group homes and has questioned why staff members failed to take action to prevent the 2007 strangling death at Illinois Manor.

In March 2007, resident Stephen Lawson was strangled at Illinois Manor. Resident James DiCioccio was accused, but was deemed incompetent to stand trial.

Shortly before the Lawson killing, DiCioccio assaulted another resident, police records show.

Novits and Lawson’s family questioned why DiCioccio was not being monitored more closely after the first assault.

Youngstown police Lt. John Kelty, who responded to the scene, said DiCioccio had been refusing to take his medications.

“That’s the problem with people like [DiCioccio],” Kelty said. “When they take their medications, they’re fine. But you can’t leave them alone in an apartment somewhere, because if they don’t take their meds, there’s no telling what can happen.”

Kelty said the best place for DiCioccio was at a group home.

“They have some kind of structure there,” he said. “The staff at least tries to make sure they get their medication.”

DiCioccio has since been committed to a state mental-health facility in Northfield.

At the time of the incident, Novits said there was no required number of staff members for facilities such as Illinois or Bryson. The night Lawson was killed, two staffers were on duty at Illinois Manor, a 15-room, 3,500-square-foot facility next door to House of Hope.

Only one staffer is required during any 24-hour period for a residential facility such as House of Hope, although more may be needed, depending on the residents’ needs, Saulitis said.

Crissman said at least two staffers are on duty at all times, and five were on duty Nov. 11 when Michael Lambert died there.

House of Hope is nearly four times the size of the former Illinois Manor, and housed 55 residents in 2010, compared to 16 at Illinois Manor in 2007.

Crissman said the facility’s staffing needs are not the same as a nursing home or state mental hospital.

“We don’t have a one-aide-to-eight-patient ratio here,” she said. “We’re a residential facility.”

Death and Sex

According to the initial Youngstown Police Department report in November, Lambert, 59, was making sexual advances to another resident while that resident was in the bathtub. The bather called another resident to get Lambert to leave.

The incident report says that when Lambert refused to leave, the second resident left to smoke a cigarette outside. He was gone for five minutes. When he returned, he found Lambert in the tub, submerged in 18 inches of bath water, unconscious. The man who originally had been in the bathtub before Lambert was gone.

The Mahoning County coroner’s office is treating the death as suspicious.

Crissman said Lambert, known as “Mickey,” was a kind of a “mascot” around the facility and that he was well-liked. She also said his intellect was that of “a young child.”

Crissman said Lambert could not possibly have understood the concept of a sexual advance, but that because of his autism, he may have been “handsy.”

Lambert’s brother, Richard of Groesbeck, Texas, said he does not believe the police report and agrees with Crissman that his brother could not understand the idea of sex. Still, Richard Lambert questions the whereabouts of the staff when his brother died.

“What were they doing while all this was going on?” he asked. “All I can tell you is, we’ve got something wrong here.”

Jean Anderson, Lambert’s sister, said her brother was deathly afraid of water and would never have gotten into a tub by himself.

Anderson further said that no administrators ever contacted her about her brother’s death, though three aides attended his funeral and were visibly upset.

“We’re not getting any answers right now,” Anderson said. “There’s something that dumbfounds me, because that wasn’t a place for him. I could tell the day we walked in there.”

This was not the first case of an alleged inappropriate sexual advance involving a local care facility.

In January 2008, the then-director of personnel at Bryson, Franklin J. Fowler Jr., was fired for improper contact with then-Bryson clients.

Fowler, who lived on the property, was accused of either visiting the residents in their rooms or calling them to his third-floor apartment.

State inspection reports from March 12, 2008, and Ohio Department of Health investigation records from Feb. 19, 2008, detail the accounts, as does a Jan. 31, 2008, Youngstown police incident report.

According to the reports, various employees said they saw the resident coming from Fowler’s apartment at different hours, usually around 5 to 6 a.m. None of them reported it, one saying she assumed everyone knew and that she was afraid she’d be fired. She decided to “mind my own business.”

According to a May 2008 Aspen Complaint/Incident Tracking System report from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “the facility fired [Fowler] on 1-28-08 for ‘improper employee-resident contact and interaction’ stating the abuse could not be substantiated.”

That was followed by a journal entry June 4, 2008, filed by state health director Dr. Jackson citing “a reasonable basis for an allegation” that Fowler “abused a resident in January 2008 by engaging in sexual conduct.” That entry was made into the health department’s Nurse Aide Registry, which maintains records of those who have “had a finding of abuse, neglect or misappropriation of property against them” which would, in effect, bar them from future employment in such facilities.

Crissman, who was an assistant administrator at Bryson at the time, declined to discuss the issue at length but denied any knowledge of Fowler’s acts.

“In a million years, I never would have thought that was going on,” she said.

No charges were ever filed against Fowler. The case was transferred from the Youngstown police’s detective division to city Prosecutor Jay Macejko, who said his office took the case as far as it could, citing a lack of evidence.

Youngstown’s Lt. Kelty added that the reason for lack of prosecution could be that the victims were not competent to testify, and even in cases with competent witnesses, convictions are difficult to obtain.

Download Home for people with mental disabilities has own issues (MP3)

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

The August 2010 closing of the Rosetta Stone restaurant in downtown Youngstown made as many headlines as its opening did in January 2008. At that time, the restaurant was seen as heralding a revitalization of the downtown. Does its closing herald the end of that revitalization? News Outlet reporter Adrienne Bish explores that question in this report.

Download Reactions vary on closing of Rosetta Stone (MP3)

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How do you want to be remembered? Would it be for your humor, compassion or drive? Could your life be summed up in a single quote or an epic poem? WYSU and News Outlet reporter Joel Anderson digs into these grave matters.

Download Last words prove to be lasting (MP3)

Public voting begins during the week of Nov. 22 for 2011: Assignment Youngstown, a project of TheNewsOutlet.org that allows citizens to have a voice in deciding what stories and issues matter most to them and to the city.

From stories about how some Youngstown neighborhood groups are trying to fight crime themselves to an examination of the growing trend of people selling goods on street corners without licenses, The NewsOutlet team has assembled plans for six stories it believes should be told and carried by Mahoning Valley media organizations.

The story ideas were developed after NewsOutlet staffers attended community meetings in the city and talked to residents about their concerns and what they are noticing happening in their neighborhoods.

But TheNewsOutlet wants more input and is now launching the next step in its 2011: Assignment Youngstown project. Citizens can rank the six story packages that TheNewsOutlet has developed. Those rankings will then be tabulated and used to guide which stories are pursued.

Once reported, written and produced, the stories will then be carried by Mahoning Valley media, including The Vindicator and WYSU FM – two founding partners of TheNewsOutlet.org. The stories will be made available, free of charge, to any interested media organization, including bloggers or others. The only requirement is that the NewsOutlet be given credit for the work.

Voting is taking place online at www.thenewsoutlet.org as well as on paper at all branches of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

TheNewsOutlet.org, funded by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Raymond John Wean Foundation, is a joint venture between Youngstown State University’s journalism program, WYSU-FM, The Vindicator, the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative and the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

Launched in September 2010, TheNewsOutlet.org has produced dozens of stories examining such issues as a malfunctioning city crime watch network, illegal dumping on the City’s East Side and life in a drug rehabilitation program.

“The NewsOutlet serves a great purpose for YSU journalism students, media organizations and the community. Students gain valuable experience that will help them when they are looking for permanent positions. The media organizations who pick up our stories get valuable content and most of all, citizens get information that they need in order to make decisions about their lives,” said Tim Francisco, co-director of TheNewsOutlet and a journalism faculty member.

Journalism students at YSU, under the direction of Journalism Director Alyssa Lenhoff and Francisco, report and write the stories. Todd Franko, editor of The Vindicator, and David Luscher, associate director of broadcasting of WYSU, work closely with the students on story development and editing.

Franko said he believes the work of TheNewsOutlet has already played an important role in the community.

WYSU-FM, which has never before aired locally produced news, is also pleased with the project.

Gary Sexton, director of broadcasting at WYSU-FM, said, “Stories from the NewsOutlet allows WYSU-FM to provide its audience with NPR-quality local news stories for the first time in its 41-year history.”

Story Published in The Vindicator on November 7, 2010

For some, life has a new beginning

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

On the last Friday of every month, the men of Ohio Valley Teen Challenge wrap up their workday a little early.

They swap their work boots, basketball shorts and cutoff T-shirts for a suit and dress shoes. With a fresh shower, shave and a splash of cologne, they head to church to commemorate the graduation of their brothers who have completed the yearlong rehabilitation program.

“Graduations are always real special for the guys,” said Kevin Rauch, program director.

He still remembers his graduation 28 years ago.

“My high school diploma didn’t mean as much,” he said. “Your [teen challenge] diploma will not keep you drug and alcohol free. It’s just a reminder.”

It’s a reminder of the lives they have led: Stealing, lying, illicit sex and excessive drug and alcohol use.

It’s also, more importantly, a reminder of the last year they have spent sober — and the hope of sustaining sobriety.

After graduating, the men are encouraged to enter the ministry. About half do. Continued involvement in the church is crucial to remaining sober in the months and years after Teen Challenge. Just attending church holds them accountable.

“The first time we missed church,” Cindy Rauch, Kevin’s wife and OVTC staff member, said, “He [Kevin] was devastated.”

Teen Challenge has grown from a simple concept planted in the streets of New York City more than 50 years ago. The organization and its founders wanted to provide an alternative to drugs and alcohol for young men and women.

More than 240 centers across the nation help men, women and youth battling with, and affected by, addiction.

“It’s not a program. It’s a relationship,” said Roy Barnett, the OVTC executive director.

The relationships and partnerships of Barnett, Rauch and Bob Pavlich, director of operations, are the foundation for OVTC. Their immediate mission is to expand the work projects.

In the first six months of 2010, OVTC’s work programs earned more than $100,000. What work projects don’t cover of OVTC’s annual $390,000 budget is made up by fundraisers and donations from various churches and community organizations.

“We’re overcrowded in our kitchen right now,” Barnett said. The bustling upstairs kitchen is home of Hope Catering, which provides boxed lunches, catering for banquets and meals for the men.

Equipment has been purchased for a downstairs kitchen. With two kitchens, OVTC can provide daily lunches for children in the Head Start program as well as Safehouse and Heart Reach, which already receive OVTC’s lunch services.

With growing operations, officials would like to see the number of beds increase. A $20,000 renovation of the south wing of the second floor would provide rooms for resident staff members, freeing up their beds in the men’s residence hall to bring in yet more men. Barnett doesn’t see the renovation, which will increase capacity from 48 to 64, happening for a year.

“You have to have money to do that,” he said.

Teen Challenge outreach centers are planned for elsewhere in the Mahoning Valley — inside the Eastwood Mall in Niles and at the Faith Chapel Fellowship in Salem.

Along with providing support for domestic, drug and alcohol abuse, volunteers and Teen Challenge staff at the outreach centers will work with local courts, Administrator Cathy Barnett said.

OVTC board member and founder Bruce Paulette is eager to see these centers open and functional.

Paulette said the Valley has a major problem with drug-addicted women who have affected children. The new centers will provide counseling and referral for these women and children.

With all its growth, a shadow looms over the residential facility near Wick Park on the city’s North Side.

The renovated building is currently in receivership pending an investigation of its owner, Frank Vennes.

In Minnesota, the government is investigating a Vennes associate for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme. Vennes’ assets, including the old Cafaro (Youngstown Osteopathic) hospital that houses OVTC, have been placed under the control of a group of lawyers until the matter is resolved.

Who will own the building is as much a mystery as who will remain in the program long enough to graduate. It will stick with some men, but it won’t with others.

John Kelly, a troubled man from Boardman, was referred to OVTC by a friend already enrolled — Dave Clementi, who would become the facility’s first graduate earlier this year.

Kelly ignored Clementi’s invite last year and took off to Las Vegas. He eventually found his way into Teen Challenge. He just needed to lose everything.

Kelly’s three-month stretch in Las Vegas spanned women, nightclubs, gambling, drinking and drugs. It was the height of his struggle with addiction.

“I was just feeding this bottomless pit in my heart,” said Kelly, 25.

He endured the strict, yearlong regimen at OVTC and in July, joined Clementi as an OVTC graduate. Clementi and Kelly now sit together in the pews at New Life Assembly of God in Poland, the same church Kelly attended as a child.

When Jesse Repko graduated June 25, his graduation portrait was placed on the wall with 10 others. With only 11 portraits, missing are the faces of the 100 men who never finished the program.

One of the faces missing is Repko’s brother, Aaron.

Though Jesse finished his internship at OVTC and is now a crew foreman for an Austintown company that restores homes, his brother Aaron was thrown out of the program in late September.

Two days after his OVTC expulsion, he was still at the Rescue Mission of Mahoning Valley, where OVTC staff had delivered him. Aaron had failed an OVTC nicotine test. It was his fifth and last write-up.

“I just made compromises,” Aaron said. “I didn’t want to obey the rules.”

Aaron said he regrets being one of the many men he had seen come and go over his eight months at OVTC.

He wishes he had completed the program. He was nearly there.

“Four more months,” he said, “is a cake walk.”

This is the conclusion of a seven-part series in The Vindicator.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Story Published in The Vindicator on November 6, 2010

There is hope

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

The first steps of a new life are the toughest — from newborns on up.

It’s just as difficult for addicts.

“I was holding on to things when I first got in here,” Anthony Sanders said.

“When I first got here, I was miserable; I was bitter,” Greg Todd said.

What they held onto and felt was contempt and fear. They were unable to feel anything else.

Sanders, Todd and Bob Pavlich were incapable of feeling guilty when they lied or stole, or when they hurt the ones they love. Their addiction stripped them of their humanity.

Each had similar reasons for entering Youngstown’s Ohio Valley Teen Challenge faith-based residential center. They couldn’t face the ones they loved. They couldn’t stay off the streets or out of jail.

They couldn’t face themselves.

The three entered Teen Challenge kicking and biting. In the program, each broke down. Each got better. But before they entered, they would each hit what drug addicts call “the bottom.”

The day before Todd was arrested for the last time, he went to his mother’s house to use the phone. His brother was home, struggling with a debilitating heart attack suffered two years prior.

“I’m on the phone, [my brother] comes around the corner and hits me with this stick, splits my head open, hits me with about 50 punches to the face, calls the cops on me ’cause he knows I got a warrant.”

Todd was arrested. He stood before the judge bloody and battered. He was given 91⁄2 months.

After six months behind bars, Todd received a visit from a cousin he had not seen in more than a decade.

“I knew that person sitting at the county jail or using wasn’t my little cousin,” Elaine Kloss said. “It broke my heart to see him in there. But I knew that he did it to himself.”

She told Todd about Teen Challenge. The seed was planted.

For Sanders, he would spend six months in jail for his four warrants. When he was released, he suggested Teen Challenge to his probation officer after failing a drug test.

He entered the program in October with no intention of ever finishing. Sanders told Pavlich, who is a director at the center, that he had to leave because of medical reasons.

Two hours after leaving the center, Sanders was high.

In the next 20 days, Sanders would again hide. It was not from the police this time, but from the heroin dealers he had robbed in his three weeks out of OVTC.

Sanders sneaked by armed drug dealers and slipped into closets. He knocked on doors as an accomplice waited behind him with a shotgun. Nothing would keep him from getting high.

After sleeping under the Summit Street bridge in Warren for days, Sanders phoned Pavlich, begging to be readmitted.

Pavlich told him to come back to the center. Why shouldn’t he have? Pavlich was no different than Sanders when he first entered the program.

In 2005, Pavlich flew from Pittsburgh to the Teen Challenge center in Muskegon, Mich.

He sat at the Pittsburgh International Airport while his flight was delayed two hours. He drank at the bar with a man until the two fought. He was nearly thrown out of the airport for public intoxication.

That is how Pavlich entered the program, drunk and running from life.

Today, Pavlich wakes up next to his wife of two years. He returns to Poland Seminary High School twice a year to teach students about the consequences of drug and alcohol addiction.

When he stands before a church audience, he spouts Scripture and preaches gospel. All the while his wife, sitting in the pews, still can’t wrap her mind around the man he used to be.

“Because he’s so strong on the Lord,” Bob’s wife, Gail Pavlich said, “It’s so hard to believe that his life was like that.”

She does believe there is a cure for addiction, and her husband is evidence of it.

“I believe once you’re set free, you’re cured,” she said.

Pavlich is still boisterous. He cracks jokes and calls everyone “bro” — just like the old days. But his family and friends trust him now.

In April, Pavlich, who used to fight anyone that wronged his sister, will preside over her wedding.

When Todd entered the program, he thought the men were crazy. They were always hugging and preaching. “I thought they were weak-minded people who were just clinging on to something,” he said.

Todd broke down.

After experiencing what he can only describe as divine intervention, Todd said he finally swallowed his pride during chapel service one morning.

“I cried like a little kid for an hour. I remember getting mad at myself because I thought everybody was watching.”

Now Todd plays in the gospel band every Wednesday night.

He is quiet. He always has been. But he is humble now, not contemptible.

When Sanders wakes up today, his sides are often swollen from liver damage caused by prescription drug abuse. His skin is occasionally jaundiced from the hepatitis he received using a dirty needle.

But Sanders said he would rather feel the discomfort of his past transgressions than live another day under the influence of drugs.

“I always felt in my old ways, before I gave my life to Christ, that I was entitled,” he said. “I was entitled to know what goes on tomorrow. I’m entitled to know what you’re doing, what this person is doing or where I’m going to be at in three months.”

His brother and sister are talking to him again. In July, his mother brought her 3-year-old grandson to OVTC to visit Sanders, who saw his son for the first time in more than a year.

Sanders is making amends with his past. He is struggling to forgive his father. Mostly, he struggles to forgive himself for the terrible things he has put his family through.

“It’s the emotional thievery that you do that’s the worst,” he said. “Robbing them of their child. … You’ll never get that back.”

Even if Sanders graduates, his mother, Karen Petro, said she might never feel comfortable leaving Sanders alone in her home.

She has been robbed of her child, but she has gained a grandchild. The boy — with blond hair and blue eyes — bears an uncanny resemblance to Anthony.

“It’s like childhood revisited all over again,” she said.

On Sunday, we conclude the OVTC series.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Story Published in The Vindicator on November 5, 2010

Ohio Valley Teen Challenge students at a crossroads

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

Michael Malott was addicted to crack cocaine before he graduated high school.

At 18, he ran a knife along his stomach and used the wound to persuade a drug dealer that he had been robbed and could not pay up.

“I’ve [overdosed] I don’t know how many times,” said Malott, now 30. “And I kept using.”

But for Malott, “rock bottom” was found with the eyes of his son.

“Rock bottom” is a term most addicts use for that pivotal moment when they realize they need help — when they give up.

In February 2009, Malott was pulled over by police while leaving a Coitsville church. In the car was his son and a crack pipe. Leaning against the police car, Malott watched helplessly as tears streamed down his son’s face.

“All he knows about jail is it’s the most horrible place in the world, and dad’s never coming home again,” he said.

That’s rock bottom.

“We are so jacked-up coming off them streets. Our brains need to be redirected and focused on something else,” Malott said.

That something else for Malott and other men at Teen Challenge is God. Yet, while they are told God saves all, all are not saved.

Many, many men will enter Ohio Valley Teen Challenge. They come from throughout the Mahoning Valley. They also are sent here from other parts of the country.

They are a complex maze of personalities and problems. While different in many ways, they all have one thing in common: Addiction.

And most of the men will never graduate. They are arrogant, stubborn, problematic and, eventually, get out of the program — on their own or by OVTC. Since its March 2009 opening, 166 men have enrolled in OVTC.

“A lot of these guys were pipe fitters, mechanics and professionals,” said executive director Roy Barnett. “The bad things were beating up the good things. Most guys, when they came into this program, hated themselves.”

Of the 166, only 11 have graduated, 12 have completed the six-month restoration program, and 43 are current residents.

That leaves 100 who have either been thrown out or have left early. The majority dropped out in their first week. Only the humble, sincere and broken remain at Teen Challenge.

Their addiction and problems contribute to a cycle of crime and poverty that reaches into many Valley towns.

“There’s a great percentage of cases that we deal with that are drug related, 85 percent, I’d say,” said Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. “Almost all burglaries and thefts and robberies involve people messed up on drugs anymore. And a lot of the murders that are committed are drug-related or gang-related.”

Judge Krichbaum and other judges send men to Teen Challenge as a last hope before jail. Other men are pushed into the program by a parent or wife. And others arrive voluntarily.

They have lived in shelters and on the streets. They have stolen from their families and friends, who have disowned them. The guys they used to run with consider them sellouts and phonies.

“That whole week of eating out of Dumpsters,” Anthony Sanders said, “well, I’ve been doing that. And I’ve been living under the Summit Street bridge because I’ve been hiding from dope dealers that I’ve robbed.”

Sanders, 23, of Warren, is in the program for a second time. When he first entered, religion overwhelmed him. He also was confused. He couldn’t imagine addicts like him being sober and happy.

So he left. Except for the handful of men in there for court purposes, the majority have nothing keeping them in OVTC. They can quit whenever they want.

When Sanders quit, his mother refused to take him, so he was delivered to the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley.

Rescue Mission official Ron Starcher has seen grown men stagger into the mission under the humbling weight of drug and alcohol addiction. Starcher said many of these men have been through a Teen Challenge facility before.

They are called rehab jumpers. They constantly bounce from 30- to 90- to 120-day rehabilitation programs only to end up back on the drug.

Families have told Bob Pavlich, the OVTC director of operations, “I’ve spent $60,000 on my son.” Pavlich, 32, is a graduate of Teen Challenge and one of 15 staff members who run the facility.

The men Pavlich preaches the gospel to have left behind family to undergo treatment at OVTC. But most have lost their families to drug and alcohol addiction long before they enrolled in the program.

“My mom, my dad — I burned a lot of bridges with them,” said OVTC resident Dennis McKenney, 26, who grew up on Youngstown’s West Side.

He has spent nine months in the program. His ex-girlfriend, Kayla Chaney, gave birth to his daughter in that time. On July 19, Matilda Reign McKenney was born at St. Elizabeth Health Center. Less than a mile away, her father paced back and forth at OVTC.

Since OVTC guidelines prohibit the men from contact with anyone but immediate family, he was not allowed to attend his daughter’s birth. Officials eventually took McKenney to the hospital to see her, and his parents bring his daughter to the center on Saturday visits if he wants to see her.

Though Chaney is reluctant to jump back into a relationship with McKenney, she is sure of one thing: If he ever uses again, “I don’t want him around the baby,” she said.

Some of the men have struggled with family their entire lives.

The Repko brothers, Jesse, 29, and Aaron, 22, grew up in Cortland with the odds stacked against them.

Their parents were 16 and 17 years old when they had Jesse, the oldest of four brothers.

“They were addicted from the start,” Jesse said. “They just kept doing what they always knew. … We felt the repercussions.”

Children services removed the boys from their mother’s custody in 1994 because of neglect. Their grandparents stepped in to raise them.

Aaron and Jesse have one brother incarcerated in Florida and another who died at 21 after leading a troubled life. The two survive with the help of each other, the program and their grandparents, who attended Jesse’s July graduation.

The men at OVTC are primarily white. There are only three black residents.

OVTC officials suggest that black and Latino families are more likely to allow a drug-addicted son or husband to live with them.

Barnett admits their small minority population is strange. At the Chicago Teen Challenge where Barnett came from, the numbers were even — a third white, a third Hispanic and a third black.

The percentage of whites also is unusually high compared to other Valley agencies.

The Rescue Mission is comprised of predominantly 30- to 45-year-old black males. And most of these men have no money and no families left, said the mission’s Starcher.

State correctional facilities and other Valley drug rehabilitation centers such as Turning Point Solutions, Neil Kennedy and Meridian Services have a clientele of nearly equal numbers of blacks and whites

Richard Billak, executive director of Community Corrections Association, also touts equal numbers.

CCA, an alternative-to-jail program which serves Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties, has provided academic instruction and life-skills training for inmates. Its offerings have included substance-abuse education, anger management, domestic-violence prevention, parenting classes and remedial classroom driving instruction to get driver’s licenses reinstated.

OVTC dropout rates are another source of disparity.

While 16 percent of the court-ordered residents at CCA have failed to complete the government-funded program, more than 60 percent have left the OVTC program since it opened in March 2009.

But for the 43 men who remain, the program is refuge from their addiction. Alcohol and drugs have torn their lives and their families apart.

“I’m a convicted felon, two-bit thief, drug addict,” Sanders said. “But, by the grace of God, I’m still breathing.”

__

This series continues Saturday with Greg, Bob and Anthony. On Sunday, we will conclude the story on OVTC.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Story Published in The Vindicator on November 4, 2010

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

The most comforting memory for Anthony Sanders’ 20-day drug binge is that he can’t remember all of it. “I don’t know if there’s a good reason why I don’t remember some of it, but I’d probably get sick to my stomach.”

It’s the binges he can remember that scare him most — the thoughts that ran through his mind after smoking crack and the things he did. “This guy is sleeping there,” Sanders, 23, recalls of one incident. “He’s got a 9-mm in his pocket, an AK laying on his bed … and I had the [guts] to … sit in his living room, taking his dope.”

Heroin, crack cocaine and prescription drugs took many memories from the men at Ohio Valley Teen Challenge. It also took their childhood. “It seemed like I was always in a hurry to grow up,” said Greg Todd, 32. “I just had a warped perception of what being grown up was.” Todd was indicted on marijuana-trafficking charges at age 15. He was arrested at high school in front of the entire East Liverpool student body.

“After that, I kind of basically withdrew. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed.”

After the arrest, people looked differently at Todd. He accepted his new reputation. Interest in sports and getting good grades became a distant memory.

Bob Pavlich, 32, grew up much like Todd, doing things that older people in Poland did, becoming someone he would learn to hate.

“I got banned from playing sports in high school. I was banned from going to dances. I was suspended from school all the time,” Pavlich said. It all began with a compromise, then another and another. He would sneak a beer from the cooler at a family outing or steal a cigarette from his grandfather.

“I’m 12, 13 years old smoking cigarettes, you know, I’m drinking,” Pavlich said. “In my eyes, I’m cooler than the other side of the pillow.”

Pavlich developed a new image: He listened to new music, mostly rap. He cursed. He migrated toward others who did likewise.

“We all liked to fight; we all liked chicks; we all liked drinking, doing drugs, smoking cigarettes. So that was the group I started running with.”

Pavlich succumbed to the pressure of fitting in. His drug use increased in frequency and potency.

“I remember when I said, ‘I’ll never do coke. I’ll never do this; I’ll never do that,’” he said. “But I’m at a party smoking weed, and people are doing whatever. I don’t want to not be cool. Cocaine came along, and every compromise was made.”

It was heroin that destroyed Todd’s life. He was engaged to his childhood sweetheart for seven years until she threw him out.

Sanders also battled with heroin, and it meant numerous troubles with police.

On New Year’s Eve 2002, Sanders, 16, fell asleep behind the wheel of his car

in his mother’s Warren driveway after a night of drugs and alcohol. Two friends were passed out in the back seat.

“I hear this on the window,” Sanders said, slamming his knuckles against the table three times. “Mr. Sanders, could you step out the car, please?” he heard an officer say.

The police had tracked him down using a license plate they found lying next to one of the six mailboxes he had demolished with his car just moments before.

He recalls the police telling his mother, “We ain’t taking your son. He dies in the county jail [and] it’s our fault.”

Sanders was charged and not jailed, and lucky to walk away with probation and his life.

“That’s one night I should have died.”

There would be others.

One snowy morning in February 2009, Sanders was going through heroin withdrawal. He took a snow shovel door-to-door and asked to clear driveways, raising money for his drug.

A neighbor let him in but refused Sanders a job. So Sanders snatched the man’s wallet on the way out. He made his way for an ATM. After a second attempt to use the stolen credit card at a Rite Aid in Champion, employees at the drugstore told Sanders there was a problem.

“Right then and there, I knew I was done,” he said.

Sanders handed the credit card and wallet over to the police three blocks away and wrote a statement incriminating himself. He spent the night in jail after his mother refused to post bail.

His mother, Karen Petro, threw Sanders out of her house when he was released. He went to live with his sister down the road.

“I stole a couple of my mom’s checks. She pressed charges against me, so I [had] a warrant out for that arrest. Stole my sister’s card. Got a warrant for the arrest on that.”

The incident opened Petro’s eyes to her son’s heroin addiction. She knew she was no longer looking at her son.

“I’m looking at the disease,” she said. “As a mother it was the hardest thing I ever had to do to press charges against him.”

In February 2009, Sanders was hiding in a friend’s attic, avoiding the four arrest warrants. He was sleeping on a hole-ridden air mattress in a windowless room surrounded by dirty needles, a prostitute and frequent crack-addict guests.

Sanders shot $60 worth of heroin into his arm, then mustered the courage to walk to the Warren police station to turn himself in when he could take no more.

“I knew the consequences; I knew the repercussions; I didn’t care,” he said. Pavlich recalls having $3,000 on any given Saturday and being unable to buy a pack of cigarettes on Monday.

He would sit on the edge of a couch for days on end, shoving cocaine into his body.

“Just getting out of bed in the morning was snorting an eight-ball of cocaine and drinking a fifth of Bacardi,” Pavlich said.

When a horseshoe-shaped bone fell out of Pavlich’s nose, he started eating what he could no longer snort. That was around Thanksgiving 2004, and Pavlich remembers lying awake in bed.

His conscience and the sound of someone else’s baby crying from an adjacent room were keeping him from sleep. “I really had to take a long, hard look in the mirror and say, ‘Wow, look what my life’s come down to.’”

Today, Pavlich still suffers the consequences of his addiction.

“There’s a dime-sized hole — bleeds all the time — going through my nose.

I’ve got a dysfunctional duodenum. I got holes going through my intestines.

I got diarrhea every single day of my life. I got high triglycerides, high cholesterol.”

Todd spent his final years before Teen Challenge in and out of jail, living with friends, women and an ex-girlfriend’s family. “By the age of 26, I was a full-blown heroin addict,” Todd said.

His drug addiction landed him in jail on charges of theft, drug paraphernalia and driving under suspension. He would spend the majority of his 20s incarcerated.

“I don’t know the exact number, but it’s somewhere right around 50 out of 60 months,” Todd said. “Basically, I’d go do six months, get out for a month, get arrested again, and I’d go back and do another six.”

The stories of Greg, Bob and Anthony conclude Saturday. On Friday, we continue the story of OVTC.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

It takes the biggest bunch of sinners to run Ohio Valley Teen Challenge

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

Within three hours of his release from the New Castle Correctional Facility, Mark Moore Sr. was standing in the residential hallway at Ohio Valley Teen Challenge.

“The camaraderie, the love,” said Moore, a heroin addict of 29 years making his second visit to a Teen Challenge center, as he described his welcome. “I knew I was home.”

Home for New Castle native Moore and 42 other drug- and alcohol-addicted men is 1319 Florencedale Ave. on Youngstown’s North Side. The community surrounding the center reflects the very elements that put these 43 men into the rehabilitation program: heroin dealers, crack houses, crime and poverty.

“With this neighborhood — phew,” said OVTC intern and Youngstown resident Ron Strait, motioning to the buildings outside. “Right over here, over there, about six places right within a seven-block radius — drug lords.” While nearby Wick Park anchors a revitalization discussion for Youngstown’s North Side, six of the 10 homes that line Broadway Avenue are boarded up.

It’s similar to what surrounded the first Teen Challenge center, founded by Dave Wilkerson in 1958. In the crime- and poverty-stricken streets of Brooklyn, N.Y., the first center was built to combat drug addiction and the advent of street gangs among the youths. Teen Challenge has since grown to incorporate 242 national facilities and more than 1,000 worldwide. It also facilitates the rehabilitation of women and children. It’s essentially a labor of love for the 15 staff members and six interns who run the Youngstown site. The total payroll is nearly $210,000. As part of the rehab, the men enrolled in the OVTC program work as many as seven days a week. “Working here ain’t a job,” said director of operations Bob Pavlich, who runs the expansive work program. “No. 1: They don’t get paid. No. 2: They don’t get a day off.”

The men’s labor affords them a safe place to sleep and three meals a day. The money raised through the work program, along with donations, funds the facility’s overall $390,000 budget. OVTC leaders are pleased at the growth the program has experienced in its first 19 months. In the first six months of 2010, the work program revenues totaled more than $100,000; $155,000 was budgeted for the entire year. “We can give the community a service in a capacity that has never been done,” said Bruce Paulette, a volunteer for the group. From Heinz Field to the Covelli Centre, the OVTC team works security at concerts and football games. Mahoning County employs the men to landscape vacant properties. The in-house catering service delivers boxed lunches and provides banquet dining. A carwash is open on Meridian Road nearly every day. Officials said the work program gives the men dignity while restoring the community.

But work is only part of the program.

When Mahoning County Judge R. Scott Krichbaum was first introduced to Teen Challenge, he was a young lawyer seeking an alternative to jail for his clients. He worked closely with Youngstown native Kevin Rauch, who is now OVTC program director. “He and I had common interests because he was willing to offer some sort of rehabilitation for my clients,” Judge Krichbaum said. After sending his first client to Teen Challenge facilities as a lawyer nearly 30 years ago, Krichbaum now sends men to OVTC as a judge.

“They’ve always been successful with people that I represented and the people that I’ve sent there,” he said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had a problem with anybody I’ve sent there, either, as far as violating the program.”

After dealing with his own troubled past, Rauch pulled men from the streets, jails and courtrooms of Mahoning County and placed them in Teen Challenge centers across the nation. His Greater Youngstown Teen Challenge Crisis and Referral Center closed its Mahoning Avenue operations in 2008 and shifted to what is now the OVTC site. It was then that Executive Director Roy Barnett took on the task of creating a residential facility and secured a rental contract from Frank Vennes, a former Minneapolis Teen Challenge board member. Vennes had OVTC in mind when he purchased the former Cafaro Memorial Hospital for nearly $73,000 in 2008. For an initial payment of $1 a month, OVTC rented a wing of the building that had been abandoned for nearly a decade. Already tenants in other parts of the building were MYCAP, Safehouse and a minority drug-abuse counseling program. And OVTC inherited all the problems that came with an aged building. “I was really overwhelmed,” Barnett said. Repairs and amenities were needed before the building could house residents. To meet the requirements for occupancy, the building first needed a kitchen. The price: $150,000.

“How much money do you have?” Paulette recalls asking. “None,” Barnett answered. “Well, either you or Jesus has a sense of humor,” said Paulette. Barnett said that within a week of securing the contract, “People came out of the woodwork.” Area churches donated money. Pittsburgh and Detroit Teen Challenge centers pitched in. Beds, tables, chairs, couches and desks were donated by the Lincoln Behavioral Center. Appliances, tools and clothing are donated almost daily from local business owners and citizens. And the kitchen: Hope For Youngstown, a former foundation that provided homes for the needy, donated $111,000 for deep fryers, grills, prep tables, ventilation hoods and a lavish walk-in freezer and cooler. No one expected the program to take off so quickly. Paulette was a cynic when OVTC officials asked for his help more than 18 months ago.

“I figured it was going to be another project that would be good for the Valley that wouldn’t happen,” Paulette said. It happened. And in 19 months, 166 men have made that same journey as Moore through the residential hallway. When men are admitted, they undergo a rigorous search. Any drug or fluid containing alcohol is taken. One man’s boxer shorts were confiscated. When he asked why, the staff member pointed to the beer logo printed on them. While vulgarity is strictly prohibited, the men carry on with the demeanor of wisecracking altar boys.

The guidelines are essentially created by the men and enforced by the men. If there is a rule, it exists because someone broke it before it existed. Still, the place is rife with chaos and mischief. If you can think of it, residents have done it. From sneaking out windows to sneaking in drugs. “The best actors ain’t in Hollywood,” Pavlich joked. “They’re running around the streets of Teen Challenge, and I was one of them. I’ve won Grammys. I’ve won Oscars for the stories I’ve told and the acts I’ve put on.” While it takes several people, from directors to counselors to 11 board members to operate the center, the residents are the lifeblood of the facility, said Barnett.

“It takes the biggest bunch of sinners to run Ohio Valley Teen Challenge.” This story continues Thursday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Story Published on November 1, 2010

How compromises begin: The men tell their stories

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

Anthony Sanders is wary of what he says, even within the protective walls of Ohio Valley Teen Challenge. The men he has wronged are the kind who carry loaded weapons and do not easily let go of a grudge.

“Stuff does happen to people when they talk too much,” he cautions. “I pray there’s no repercussions.” Greg Todd knows all too well that people will talk. His bad reputation growing up in East Liverpool follows him today.

Sitting at OVTC, he rests his head against his clasped hands, his eyes fixed on the table. He recalls the cement cell in the Columbiana County Jail where he sat on a thin bed sheet over a stiff mattress covering a metal rack. In all his life, he had never felt so alone.

“Literally jumping out of my skin,” he remembered. “There was no one I could call. There was no one.”

As Bob Pavlich sits behind his OVTC desk, air whistles through his nasal passage. He squeezes the tip of his nose between his thumb and index finger. It’s the lingering irritation in his nasal passages caused by years of cocaine use, which has left a dime-sized hole in his septum. We are all on a path in life. Not all paths are perfect.

For Todd, Sanders and Pavlich, their paths that were laden with drugs and crime all started with seemingly harmless compromises as young boys.

Pavlich, 32, is now an ordained pastor and director of operations at OVTC, working up the group’s ranks after being a graduate himself. But in Poland — as a kid — he was a thug. Sanders, 23, is from the west side of Warren. He is a resident at OVTC. Like many of the men, he has a child waiting for him after rehabilitation and family relationships to reconcile. Todd, 32, is in between roles at OVTC. He has graduated from OVTC and is following in the footsteps of Pavlich.

Todd is currently a staff supervisor for one of the program’s work outfits. Todd grew up in what he calls a good home with happily married parents. “Dad worked hard every day. Mom was a stay-home mom.” Todd is the youngest of three children. His sister is seven years older, his brother 11 years older. He said he felt like an only child because of the age gap.

He received good grades in school. He played baseball from age 8 and picked

up football at 14. Sanders’ childhood was the opposite. His was filled with contempt. “My parents divorced,” Sanders said. “Me and my brother, we stuck close. …

We chose to live with my dad.”

Sanders, 10 at the time, takes credit for raising his brother, who was three years younger. Sanders, in turn, said he was raised at the bar his dad owned. “My dad always had money,” he said. “It was so easy for me growing up to never have to worry about running out of money ’cause I would just go rob dad.”

At 14, Sanders would stay at a friend’s place and sneak into his father’s house. He knew every creak in every step. He slipped into his father’s wallet and took $200 to $300 each time. Pavlich grew up in Poland with supportive parents like Todd’s and without the worry of money, like Sanders.

His family’s history gave no indication of the troubles he would encounter. “No drugs, no alcohol, no anything,” Pavlich said. “I come from a good family.”

At 11, he was golfing with his dad. He pitched for his baseball team. He was an active child and received encouragement from his family.

“I remember as a kid, me and my dad used to go bowling like every Friday night. You know, because we’d have bowling league on Saturday.”

Summers were spent vacationing. Pavlich recalls golfing on the nicest courses Myrtle Beach offered.

“Actually, I had a real good life. Just your typical … Poland kid.” Pavlich remembers his first car, a humble 1984 Celebrity.

“Thinking I was sweet, pulling the seats back, ’cause I was a gangsta,” he said through a sarcastic laugh. “Wearing my hat crooked and living in Poland. You know, people still do that these days, and it makes me laugh.” He first tried alcohol at a Fourth of July party. He snuck cigarettes from family members and did all those things a boy is told not to do. He did them because he thought it was cool.

“That’s how my first compromises started,” Pavlich said. He would slowly cave in to drugs and alcohol until he couldn’t wake up without snorting cocaine and washing it down with rum. Pavlich would not be alone.

Todd battled heroin addiction that wreaked havoc on his life and the ones he loved. His addiction led to petty thefts that landed him in jail for half of his 20s. Sanders survived a series of near-fatal incidents and a life of crime fueled by his addiction.

The stories of Greg, Bob and Anthony continue Thursday. On Tuesday, we continue the story of OVTC.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

Story Published on October 31, 2010 in The Vindicator
Some still seek cure at old Cafaro hospital

By Doug Livingston

TheNewsOutlet.org

Cafaro Memorial Hospital on Youngstown’s North Side was, for decades, a place where the sick went to be cured.

Though it closed in 2000, curing the sick continues there. They are men, broken and in disrepair — a living version of the hospital’s bleak neighborhood near Wick Park. Buried behind arm-length tattoos and weathered smiles are troubled lives scarred by drug and alcohol addiction.

Inside the worn 1953 hospital, 48 beds are continuously filled with often desperate and often despised souls. Greg Todd grew up in East Liverpool. He became an addict first, then a thief, and finally a convict.

Bob Pavlich awakes every morning in a body ravaged by years of cocaine addiction. And And Anthony Sanders’ cold, blue eyes stare through you as he recalls one crime-and drug-filled night. Calmly, he admits, “That’s one night I should have died.”

From Boardman, Columbiana, Howland, New Castle, Youngstown and elsewhere they come. Their families won’t have them. Prison could worsen them — or kill them. In between prison and death sits the Ohio Valley Teen Challenge rehabilitation center, an ill-fitting name as all of its residents are adult males, mostly in their 20s and 30s — but others in their 40s, 50s and even 70s.

Teen Challenge USA has been rebuilding lives since 1958. It is a network of 242 residential centers across America and more than 1,000 worldwide. The centers deal specifically with men, women and youths who are suffering from addiction or its consequences. In March 2009, Teen Challenge opened a residential center in Cafaro, later known as Youngstown Osteopathic Hospital, on Florencedale Avenue.

“We’re here to bring life to men who have given up on life,” said Roy Barnett, OVTC executive director. “We rebuild people — restoring families and reclaiming a community.” Men pay a one-time $1,000 fee to enter the live-in treatment program that will take over their lives for the next 12 months. Depending on the time of day, the facility is part monastery, part fraternity and part military barracks.

While it’s fraternal in many ways, it’s imprisoning in others: No unescorted leaves off building grounds, visitors-only on Saturdays, set bedtime, set wake-up time, no fighting, cursing, tobacco or alcohol, and no exceptions. Punishment is often expulsion.

And OVTC’s single-most employed rule is also its most dividing: God.

Unlike other rehab programs, OVTC uses Scripture instead of prescriptions. The Bible, and God, are everywhere — in chapel, at dinner, on the job, and often, spontaneously in the hallways. Mostly the men pray for change. They ask for freedom from the shackles of addiction.

“I tried for so long to change my heart,” Boardman resident and OVTC graduate John Kelly said. “He [God] changed my heart.”

The men are taught morality and dignity. An expansive work program on- and off-site is designed to develop a strong work ethic while also paying the facility’s bills. They learn how to be human again. “What we’re instilling in them is just good old-fashioned values,” said Administrator Cathy Barnett, who is married to Roy.

“An addict is a very selfish person. Teaching them to go to work every day takes the focus off them,” she said. Mahoning County’s crime and drug use put the city in dire need of a center to take in these men who are too old for the juvenile system and a regretful burden on their families, Roy Barnett said.

For 20 years, Youngstown’s own had been sent to Teen Challenge centers across America. Now, men from the Mahoning Valley and across the nation come here to the North Side facility.

But OVTC success — if measured by graduates — has been limited.

In its 19-month existence, just 11 men have graduated even though 166 men have enrolled. In all, 100 men have failed to graduate.

Some men are thrown out for violations or violence. Others walk out on their own accord for a variety of reasons. “Not everybody’s going to stay in Teen Challenge,” Roy Barnett said. While it’s always full, it’s a revolving door of new faces every day. As one man exits, another is admitted.

Amid this seemingly chaotic life, OVTC has its community supporters, from judges to other addiction-support agencies to facilities that employ the men, such as the Canfield Fair or the Covelli Centre. OVTC operates on an annual budget of $390,000. The nonrefundable $1,000 entrance fee is a small portion of revenue and equates to less than $3 a day for room and board.

Hence the residents are the labor. Earnings from the various jobs go directly toward maintaining the facility and work programs. You will find OVTC men landscaping blighted properties in Youngstown. You’ll find them working security at Pittsburgh Steelers games. They cater lunches. They clean up the Covelli after events.

Inside the facility, the men live together on donated bunk beds. They work together and play together. They cook and eat their meals together. It is a daily struggle of egos and addictions.

OVTC is staffed 24/7 by 15 staff members, including the Barnetts. Ten staffers are like Al Franco — graduates of the program from this facility or others in the U.S. Franco grew up in Trumbull County and in a church-going family. “I liked drugs and alcohol better,” Franco said. A 1985 graduate of Mathews High School, Franco recalls smoking $700 to $1,000 of crack cocaine each day. He said he often purchased crack from the North Side houses that now surround OVTC. The drugs he bought he often pushed to friends in Champion.

Today, Franco pushes boxed lunches instead. He is the head chef at the center and runs its Hope Catering Service, one of OVTC’s many work programs.

The sustainability of OVTC depends on the success of the numerous fundraisers, jobs and donations collected. But, ultimately, the program depends on the very men who depend on it. There are no bars or locks holding them, just a desire to get better. As they toil for the program, they watch as others leave, only to crawl back after relapsing.

Some of the men who quit find difficulty in dealing with the religious aspect. Although they initially accepted it, they soon learn that

Christianity saturates the entire program, and it prompts them to leave. Other men take offense to the overwhelming joy of the more tenured residents.

“Everybody was too happy,” said Sanders, 23, of Warren. His first time in OVTC, Sanders quit the program because he could not quit his prescription medication. Less than 30 days later, he came back begging for help.

“That’s where that whole submission thing comes in,” Sanders said. “Giving it over to God …”

This story continues tomorrow in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

TheNewsOutlet.org

Youngstown

The city has spent more than $32,000 for an emergency neighborhood-watch system that hasn’t worked properly for more than a year.

That doesn’t include the $6,300 a year spent to maintain it, and that has frustrated some city residents and officials.

The City Watch System should send messages to the telephone numbers of block- watch group members when there is an emergency or a block watch or town meeting.

But for Phil Kidd, president of Wick Park Neighborhood Association, the system sent out messages to Struthers’ residents when he tried to notify people in his North Side block-watch group about a meeting.

“The calls didn’t go to people in my neighborhood. They were going to senior citizens in Struthers, and they in turn were calling the Better Business Bureau,” Kidd said.

But the calls didn’t stop once the system was activated. Calls from the automated system kept going to Struthers residents.

For the residents of the Newport Neighborhood Association, the repeated phone messages from the failed system were too much. The block watch group decided to stop using it all together.

“We really need to move on. We can’t wait for them to fix it,” said Paul Heine, a member of the Newport Neighborhood Association.

Most frustrated of all is Police Chief Jimmy Hughes.

Hughes said there has not been one year since 1997 that the police department has not experienced a problem with the City Watch System.

“It’s a system we would like to keep because it’s valuable when it’s working, but my patience has run out,” Hughes said, adding he believes “the system has outlived its usefulness.”

Some city council members think the City Watch System is a good idea, but wonder why it’s not working and when will the problems be corrected.

“I’ve always been in the homeowners’ group on this side of town and the City Watch System has made it much easier for our block watch group to operate,” said Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st. She is a member of the Northeast Homeowners and Concerned Citizens Association on the city’s East Side.

A glitch was reported May 21, 2009, said Officer Ed Colon, head of the system. The problem was never fully addressed, however.

The city bought the system in 1997 from Avtex Solutions of Bloomington, Minn., for $22,000. In 2005, the city spent $10,000 more to upgrade it.

Some of the problems could be fixed with more upgrades, said Don Denman, vice president of City Watch System.

“Telecommunications is rapidly changing, and sometimes the system can’t tell the difference between a human, an answering machine or a cell phone. The technology is not as simple as it used to be,” Denman said.

“There are no real problems with the system. It could be the way people are using it,” he added. “The system is used as a platform for emergencies, so until someone confirms the message, the calls may continue to go to the same household.”

In the meantime, the city has been working with the Youngstown 911 Center to have the system shut off when it makes repeated phone calls to the same person.

“If a citizen receives three or more repeat phone calls, the citizen can call the Youngstown 911 System and have the calls shut off,” said Councilman John R. Swierz, D-7th.

The police department does not have a record of the number of shutoffs.

The City Watch System is a vital tool for block-watch groups across Youngstown, said Kidd, who also is an organizer for the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, which aims to form groups that share the common goal of cleaning up urban neighborhoods in Youngstown and Warren.

Without the system many groups don’t have a quick means of communication.

“Neighborhoods in Youngstown are becoming increasingly more organized. In order to maximize such efforts, effective and quick communication is often times important,” Kidd said.

“City Watch — when fully operational — can be a very useful tool in that regard.” The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU-FM radio and The Vindicator.

By Emmalee Torisk

TheNewsOutlet.org

Chuck Schell stood in a freshly cut patch of grass. Behind him, the boarded-up entrance of an aluminum-sided rental unit, one of several in the row, warned in orange spray paint: “Keep Out!”

A sheet of plywood with the bar code sticker still attached replaced a shattered window. From the ceiling spilled a jumble of wires. Triangles of glass rested on the terra cotta roof and, directly below, just a faint imprint of the house number that had long ago fallen off.

Schell glanced back.

“It looks better than it did,” he said.

Schell is a resident of Campbell’s Blackburn Plat, a complex of prefabricated concrete housing units constructed by the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co.’s Buckeye Land Co. nearly one century ago, following a strike, for laborers and their families. At one time, the amount of units numbered in the 200s.

Today, despite fewer residences and decades of neglect, several Blackburn Plat residents like Schell are working to clean up and maintain the units, as well as the neighborhood.

“It’s not the buildings that are the problem. It’s the people that are making it a bad place to be,” Schell said. “I’d really like to see the place come back to life with decent people involved. It’s not as bad as people think.”

When constructed, Blackburn Plat’s one- and two-bedroom rental units were equipped with the era’s modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing, central heating and electricity. They were among the earliest uses of concrete for domestic architecture.

Photo by Robert K. Yosay | The Vindicator
Vandalized homes as Wendy Douglas and Rob McGhee look over one of the homes in the development.

Many units have since been stripped of their utilities, used as a dumping ground or a haven for squatters, and even set on fire. Although designed to be fire and vermin proof, several units’ original wooden staircases, woodwork and other fixtures have been damaged or decimated.

Still, the buildings remain. They’re so sturdy, Schell said, that it would be a shame to tear them down. And, if some entity attempts to, Schell said he’d strap himself to a front porch to prevent their demise.

Schell’s plan is simple: to get the units fixed up, self-sufficient and livable. He’s attempted this, at various points, since the age of 18. Then, he helped return several units to a livable state. Now, they’re “all busted up again.”

“The more up and running units you have, the more of a chance these places have of staying here,” Schell said. “I grew up here, and I have a lot of memories here. I can look at a boarded-up unit and tell you who lived there 20 years ago. I can remember what it looked like then. Every time I try to leave this place, I end up back here.”

Condition determines the length and intensity of the renovation process. Some units, Schell said, take only a few days, while others require more than a month of work, beginning with opening all the windows and doors, scrubbing down the residence and removing all trash. Schell does most of the work himself and fixes up each apartment, room by room.

Last year, he bought a unit on Delmar Street for $300. The water line had been ripped out, but all other utilities were practically intact. After two days of cleaning and one day of restoring plumbing fixtures, Schell made the apartment functional again — for $75.

According to the Mahoning County Auditor’s website, the 624-square-foot residence built in 1921 and its property is valued at $700. Schell has purchased other units for anywhere from $500 to $1,300, again spending no more than $500 on repairs.

Photo by Robert K. Yosay | The Vindicator
Interior of one of the homes.

Schell owns and maintains 10 individual units, spread throughout the neighborhood, but he also cares for properties without his name on the deed. From early in the morning until late at night, Schell, along with his one full-time employee, who trades work for rent, cleans, paints, boards up and secures units in Blackburn Plat. Other neighborhood residents and volunteers maintain the area and their individual properties as well.

“Every day it’s a new project,” Schell said. “It seems like I just get done mowing my lawns, and it’s time to do it again. Mow them, weed them, use the blower, clean the walkways off, sweep the porches off. I keep everything clean.”

The neighborhood literally built by Youngstown Sheet & Tube is bisected by Jackson Street, which, at one time, separated the foreign-born white and the black residents.

Blackburn Plat residents could easily walk downhill to their jobs at the mill, but the walk home — uphill after a full day of work — was “obviously hard,” said Donna DeBlasio, an associate professor of history at Youngstown State University.

Still, the units “were probably better than a lot of stuff that would have been available to a lot of workers in that period,” DeBlasio said. And, although they were made small, to discourage taking in boarders, the apartments could be affordably rented for 25 percent of a worker’s wages.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube divested, or sold, Blackburn Plat, along with its three other housing complexes, in the early 1940s.

Therefore, each unit in Blackburn Plat has its own deed. Many are abandoned. Many are owned by out-of-town landlords. Even more have absentee owners who are virtually impossible to contact or identify. Often, even if owners are found, they are unwilling to sell their properties or demand inflated, unreasonable prices. This, Schell said, is a major problem.

“You have to be here to own something here,” Schell said. “I’ve seen people come in here, buy an apartment and say, ‘I’m going to fix this one up. I’m going to rent it out. It’s going to be beautiful,’ and they just let it sit. People break into them [and] they tear them up because they’re just sitting there.”

As a result, some former residences have been condemned and must then remain vacant until the problem is abated or terminated.

Photo by Robert K. Yosay | The Vindicator
The first of many homes that hopefully will be rehabed in Campbell. This group is owned by Bill Kish.

Contrary to popular opinion, even though the Blackburn Plat units are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, they can be torn down as long as the effort is not a federal undertaking, which requires review, DeBlasio said.

City Administrator Lou Jackson said Campbell has no plans to demolish the former worker housing, with the possible exception of a few units that are beyond repair.

“The condition’s not too bad,” Jackson said. “Every time one unit gets empty, it’s boarded up for security reasons. People drive by and see it boarded up, but that’s what we want. It prevents people from getting in and demolishing from the inside.”

DeBlasio said she’d like to see the Blackburn Plat units restored to productive use, especially if they remain as working-class housing. It’s what they were intended to be, she said, and that is part of the location’s past.

She’d also like to see the university acquire an apartment for use as a museum. Regardless of the structures’ future use, their value is “immeasurable.”

“In preservation in general, what tended to get preserved was the really pretty stuff,” DeBlasio said. “Working-class anything, it’s harder to find because it’s considered more expendable. You kind of need both though. We can learn a lot by reading those buildings and how people lived.”

TheNewsOutlet.org

YOUNGSTOWN

The former Lewis Auto Body shop stands guard over a mountain of more than 30,000 tires and other debris on Wilson Avenue across the street from St. Stephen of Hungary Church.

Trees, sumac shrubs and poison ivy have for decades blocked the view of the illegal dump from passing traffic. But a short walk down a cracked asphalt drive leads to small tire piles, and then to a large collection of tires.

Lewis Auto Body closed about 1979. Yet the building and its land have remained a haven for illegal dumping to this day.

But this may be its last day.

Youngstown community groups and the city are taking action to remove the eyesore from the neighborhood with a cleanup scheduled to begin today, according to Jennifer Jones, Youngstown Litter Control and Recycling coordinator.

Jones has been part of an army of Valley agencies — The Green Team, Youngstown City Council, Mahoning Valley Organizing Committee, Ambassadors for Christ, Lien Forward Ohio, the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency — aligned for this effort.

Jones was initially approached last year about the illegal tire dump by the Ambassadors for Christ, a group of six churches on the East Side. The Ambassadors started the tire- dump project about 10 years ago, when Pastor Roney Tucker was the president.

The Rev. Nicholas Mancini became president last year and took over the project, and came into contact with the MVOC and city officials.

Photo by Robert K. Yosay | The Vindicator John Lesnansky, left, Helen Jackson and the Rev. Nicholas Mancini survey tires that will be cleaned up on Wilson Avenue across from St. Stephen of Hungary Church. The former Lewis Auto Body shop has been a popular illegal dumping ground since it closed in the 1970s.

“We suspect small tire shops are dumping in the area because there is such a large quantity of tires,” said Jones. “Every time I go out there, more tires are collecting on the property, and it isn’t just one or two; more like hundreds.”

Jones applied for a Tire Amnesty Grant through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, and received $20,000 for tire removal. Green Team coordinator Jim Petuch applied for a grant for the same lot and received $16,500.

No person or business owner has been charged with tire dumping at this location. But the Green Team funds two litter enforcement deputies to investigate illegal dumping in the city.

“I don’t receive information on the crimes until there is solid evidence,” said Petuch.

Now that the process for the removal of the tires is in place, the groups are exploring options for a prevention plan to stop continued dumping on the vacant lot.

“We are looking at maybe surveillance cameras, increased patrols, blocking off areas. Of course the dumpers will just find another spot to dump,” said Petuch.

“But the most important thing to do is catch them and nail them, and I mean really nail them so they go to prison for many years. Because these are felonies, and felonies as per the code are serious offenses,” he added.

According to Jones, the tire dumping occurs at night because the lot is located in an abandoned business district. This makes it difficult to catch the dumpers and prosecute them.

The idea is to put the land to productive use by turning it into a community area, possibly with some picnic tables or swing sets, said Jones.

“These people have some conscience. They wouldn’t dump tires where a swing set that a child will use the next day is located,” she said.

The property is broken into about 30 parcels with multiple owners, some of whom are dead, and many owners have abandoned their lots and do not pay their taxes, said Jones.

“The EPA has been working on it for at least four years that I know of,” Jones said of the cleanup of the tires. The EPA must send out “notice of violation” letters to the property owners because by law the owners are financially responsible for the tire removal.

Jones said the Ambassadors for Christ will work with Lien Forward to acquire the properties on Wilson Avenue to make it into a community area.

Illegal tire dumps also pose a significant health and safety risk due to mosquito breeding and fires, said Petuch.

Tires are highly flammable because they have a petroleum base. Tire fires can burn for a long time. “You can’t just spray them with a hose and expect them to go out,” said Petuch. “If the dump on Wilson caught on fire, it could burn for weeks.”

“Not only is it a hazard to have these illegal tire dumps, but it is a waste of land. Why have all these tires sitting around, when you could be growing crops or food for citizens in community gardens,” said Petuch.

The Youngstown Litter Control and Recycling contracted with Minerva-based Liberty Tire Services of Ohio to remove the tires, and the company offered free labor to demolish the vacant building on the property.

Liberty Tire Services processes and refines the tires into a raw material that is used for rubber mulch, fuel for mills and power plants, paving materials and other products.

Download Cleanup begins on 30,000 tires (MP3)

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By Doug Livingston/REPORTER

YOUNGSTOWN – Community block-watch president Gail Stark walks through the city’s south side almost daily. She waves to every passing car. She says hello to every head that pokes out from behind the screen doors.

Stark knows that behind many of the screen doors there are families, some with small children, who live daily without water and basic utilities. She is emotionally and financially invested in the neighborhood.

She is friendly with the many low-income families who live on the south side but being a landlord has forced her to also be diligent. She checks monthly to make sure her own tenants are paying their water bills. When they move out, she is often left with the last month’s rent and an unpaid water bill.

Sherry DeMar, president of the Mahoning Valley Real Estate Investors Association, said the bills can add “up to thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.”

As a landlord, Stark knows she is responsible for the water bills for her properties.

“That’s what the procedure is in the city of Youngstown,” Stark said. “That’s not a good procedure.”

She knows what it looks like when the bills do not get paid and Youngstown children go without water.

“They’re poor. They’re hungry,” she said. “They’re not cleaned. And they have little joy in their lives.”

“It’s not uncommon in those neighborhoods to not have gas … It’s not uncommon to have their water turned off because the bill hasn’t been paid. The kids tell you that they don’t have water,” she said.

Tenants and homeowners cast a wary eye at the white car parked outside a vacant house along Samuel Street. The green lettering on the side of the vehicle reads “Water Department.”

Stark and a resident who asked to remain anonymous said the water in the neighborhood is shut off in droves. Residents are hesitant to admit they have no running water, especially those with children. It’s illegal.

Joe Martin, a program analyst for the Youngstown Water Department, said the reason for neighborhoods losing water in large numbers is only logical.

“We bill all those accounts at the same time,” Martin said. “We work in one neighborhood at a time.”

While the water department’s collection division compiles annual statistics on disconnections and usage, Martin said, “We don’t have any reason to track how many are shut off at a time.”

In 2003, the water department read almost 520,000 meters and disconnected nearly 3,000 delinquent accounts. In 2004, roughly 482,000 meters were read, and more than 7,000 accounts were disconnected.

DeMar said the reason for the number of disconnections doubling during this time is that the Mahoning Valley Real Estate Investors Association brought a lawsuit against the city of Youngstown. The MVREIA was concerned that the water department was not following through with disconnections for homes that had outstanding bills, leaving landlords to pay the delinquent charges.

“This just isn’t fair,” Demar said, now president for one and a half years. “I think (the lawsuit) accounts for why the disconnections went up.”

In 2009, 589,260 meters were read and 6,332 delinquent accounts were shut off.

“We are more aggressive,” Martin said.

“I think this water commissioner, (John Casciano), is more attentive,” DeMar said. “He went in with the idea of solving problems.”

Youngstown residents can help set their news agendas

Youngstown residents will be able to help shape their news and community needs through a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as part of its Knight Community Information Challenge.

Knight Foundation has awarded thenewsoutlet.org a $79,000 grant to support the start-up news and information venture, operating as a partnership between Youngstown State University’s journalism program, public radio station and NPR affiliate WYSU and The Vindicator, Youngstown’s daily newspaper.

TheNewsOutlet.org pairs YSU journalism students with professionals from The Vindicator and WYSU to produce community-centered, multimedia story packages that will be aired and published by professional media organizations.

The project involves student journalists meeting with area residents to discuss issues and concerns and to develop story ideas, generated by community input.

Based on those meetings and with support from the Public Library of Mahoning County as well as the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative, area residents will be urged to vote for stories they would like TheNewsOutlet.org to report and produce. Residents can vote from any computer, and the Public Libraries will provide free computer access and instructions on how the project works and how residents can participate. In addition, the library will distribute traditional paper “story sheets” and collect paper ballots to reach residents not yet versed in technology.

The NewsOutlet.org, launched and directed by journalism professors Tim Francisco and Alyssa Lenhoff, seeks to bring attention to under-reported stories and issues in the Youngstown Metropolitan area.

“Today’s media are grappling with dwindling resources at the same time that they are more fully than ever understanding the need to engage more directly with their communities in innovative ways. Our project aims to address both of these important issues, while helping our students become more involved in the Youngstown community” Francisco said.

Stories already produced include examinations of how police overlooked warning signs leading up to a shooting, why the public transit agency used stimulus funds to refurbish offices instead of areas used by riders and how churches are scrambling to find pastors in the economic downturn. Voting will take place on www.thenewsoutlet.org, vindy.com, wysu.org, ysu.edu and www.libraryvisit.org. All library branches in Mahoning County will also have paper voting available.

Knight Foundation awarded the grant to The Raymond John Wean Foundation, which is providing match funds for TheNewsOutlet.org. The grant is part of the Knight Foundation’s Community Information Challenge and The Wean Foundation’s commitment to help improve the lives of residents of the Mahoning Valley.

“The Raymond John Wean Foundation and others are at the frontline of an increasing movement of place-based foundations to improve the information health of America’s communities,” said Alberto Ibarguen, president and CEO of Knight Foundation. “Their work helps residents have the information they need to make important decisions about their communities. Ultimately, our democracy will only thrive if we have
informed and engaged communities.”

The Knight Community Information Challenge helps community and place-based foundations support news and information projects that inform and engage residents.

Picked up by The Vindicator Aug. 2, 2010

YOUNGSTOWN

City police are at a loss to explain why a July 23 report detailing a threat of physical harm went largely ignored. The threat arose from a dispute over a car that was apparently involved in a crime.

As detailed in the report, a customer of an East Side used-car dealership reportedly threatened the owner and his nephew. The report also indicates the dealer accepted a car the customer said was used in a crime, but did not report that fact immediately to police. That could be considered a violation of city law.

The nephew’s house and car were set on fire three days after the dealer filed a report on the threat.

A preliminary determination by Youngstown Fire Department staff at the scene suggests arson.

Paul Parks, owner of P&J Auto Sales on Albert Street, bought a white 2000 Cadillac Sedan on July 9 from a woman and a man she said was her boyfriend. The boyfriend is the suspect in the threat and arson reports.

Parks told police the car was registered to the 29-year-old Schenley Avenue woman. According to a report, Parks told police the boyfriend said “he was always getting pulled over, and he had shot at somebody while he was driving the car.” The man is unidentified in police reports and unknown to Parks.

“It’s common. Every day,” Parks said of the deal in which the 2000 Cadillac was traded in for a 1999 Cadillac and $102.50 in taxes.

Parks, 60, said he later found chips in the windshield of the 2000 Cadillac that he suspected were from the expended shell casings that littered the floor of the vehicle.

Parks cleaned up the car and put it on his lot for sale.

“I just throw away the casings and go about my business,” Parks said.

Two weeks after Parks traded the car, the man returned, complaining the 1999 Cadillac he had received in the trade was overheating. The man stated he had a mechanic look at the car, but Parks requested the car be looked at by a dealership mechanic. The man refused.

According to police reports and a statement from Parks, the man threatened to shoot Parks and his nephew, John Gaia, if his 2000 Cadillac was not immediately returned.

In the July 23 report, Gaia told police the man told him, “If Paul don’t give me my car back, I am going to shoot up your house and your family. I know where you live, and I don’t have a problem with it because I have already done 10 years before.”

Three days later, Gaia’s car and residence were burned.

In a police report, a captain for the Youngstown Fire Department told police that “it seems that the auto … was set on fire, which led to the residence catching on fire.”

Alvin Ware, the fire department’s chief arson investigator, said tests on the Gaia’s burned residence and car were conducted and shipped to the state for evaluation July 26.

The cause of the fire is expected in one to two weeks, he said.

Youngstown Police Capt. Rod Foley said if Parks had reported the vehicle’s condition July 9, when the transaction occurred, “We would have followed up that morning.”

But why wasn’t the July 23 threat report investigated?

“A lot of times, it falls through the cracks,” Foley said. “A lot of times [detectives] look at the solvability of it,” and determine that no follow-up is needed.

“For some reason, [the July 23 report] wasn’t assigned,” Foley added. “I don’t know why it wasn’t assigned.”

Foley has since assigned the case to a detective and is trying to determine why the threat incident was not originally investigated.

Detective Nick Boubalis, who works in the Violence and Gun Reduction Interdiction program, thinks the investigation would be “an easy follow-up.” The suspect’s girlfriend is named in the police report. Boubalis added it is unfortunate that Parks did not mention the car was used in a crime to the police earlier this month.

Parks may be in violation of a city law, however.

Youngstown City Ordinance 525.05 states, “No person, knowing that a felony has been or is being committed, shall knowingly fail to report such information to law enforcement authorities.”

Parks said the man who sold him the 2000 Cadillac told him “the car is [targeted by police]; I need to get rid of it.”

The city ordinance goes on to say that if a witness is informed of a crime, it is his or her duty to report that activity to the authorities. Failure to report a crime is a misdemeanor.

City Prosecutor Jay Macejko and his staff refused to comment on the matter.

It is the responsibility of the dealerships to report this activity, even though talking to the police could bring about harmful repercussions, police officials said.

“We don’t want to put witnesses in danger,” Lt. Kevin Mercer said. “But, at the same time, we all have to do our part to keep the community safe from criminals.”

Some dealerships outside the city say they have never received a car used in a crime.

“I’ve been here 17 years,” said Mark Fabian, general sales manager for Greenwood Chevrolet in Austintown, “I can’t even recall one.”

Others say the problem is more prevalent at buy-here, pay-here lots or smaller dealerships.

Mike Ali owns Magic Motors on Oak Street on the East Side. He said he sees one or two cars a year that have been used in a crime. He recently purchased a bullet-hole-ridden car from an auction.

He said he would contact police if a car in a similar condition were brought to his lot.

“Maybe this is something new that needs to be brought to our attention,” Mercer said of the frequency of cars’ being purchased at local dealerships that may have been used in crimes.

Picked up by The Vindicator July 10. 2010

The Sea to Shining Sea Bike Ride will make stops in eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania next week, bringing a local hero with it.

The goal of the ride is to honor the courage of servicemen and women, recognize the strength of the American spirit and challenge perceptions of how Americans view athletes, according to the organization’s website.

One of the 17 cyclists will be Marc Esposito, 26, a Boardman native now living in North Carolina.

Esposito was working as a combat controller for the Air Force Special Operations division in Afghanistan when his unit fell victim to an improvised-explosive-device attack that left him with two broken legs, a broken back and several missing teeth.

Esposito was partially on fire when a medic found him.

Esposito spent four months recovering at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C., before he was moved to The Center for Intrepid in San Antonio, Texas, a rehabilitation facility to treat amputees and burn victims.

It was in San Antonio when he learned of the Sea to Shining Sea Bike Ride, sponsored by State Farm Insurance and World T.E.A.M. Sports.

All of the 17 cyclists are disabled. Many of them are wounded soldiers still regaining the use of their legs, some without that use at all.

Esposito says he hopes the ride will help Americans to think like he does and never simply accept the expectations, a value he says he learned in the military.

“We hope it’s a contagious kind of thing,” he said.

The trip stretches nearly 4,000 miles. It began in San Francisco on May 22 and will end in Virginia Beach on July 24.

It spans 50 cities, 43 of which it will have crossed before reaching Steubenville and Weirton, W.Va, on Tuesday.

The riders will reach Pittsburgh on Wednesday, where they could rendezvous with some former Pittsburgh Steelers.

For more information on the ride, go to the website www.S2SSbikeride.org.

Picked up by The Vindicator May 29, 2010

YOUNGSTOWN

Mill Creek MetroParks leaders are optimistic that changes happening now will set the 110-year-old system park on a path to sustain the footprints first set by founder Volney Rogers.

The park system has been without a full-time director since August, and its board is trying to smooth its expansion from three voting members to five.

Also, for the first time in 12 years, the golf courses are raising rates.

New board member John Ragan looks not to the golf course but to another Mill Creek icon as the bellwether.

“Fellows Riverside Gardens is unbelievable,” Ragan said. “There is no reason why all the structures eventually can’t be like that.”

That sentiment solidifies the changing reality that interim director Tom Bresko does not evade. He remembers when he was a kid and he was among park patrons who came to explore, have a picnic with the family and go hiking.

Those days are over.

“Park use has changed,” Bresko said. “We need to do something to bring the people out, and it is through programming.”

Last year, the board under the auspices of Mahoning County Probate Court was expanded to five members with the addition of Ragan, Daniel De Salvo and Dr. Robert Durick. They joined Virginia Dailey, who has been on the board since 1998, and Jay Macejko, who was appointed in January 2009.

“Change always brings about fear, concern or reservations. But history will demonstrate that expansion to a five-member board was the correct decision,” Macejko said.

With the additions of Ragan and Durick, and with De Salvo replacing retired member Carl Nunziato, the three new members have instant majority over the returning Dailey and Macejko.

“I knew right away from the accounts in the paper that some of the board members weren’t excited about the expansion,” Ragan said. “I believe that they weren’t excited because they were going to lose control of the board and the direction they wanted to push Mill Creek MetroParks.”

Count Dailey as initially concerned; but that was then.

“We have three new board members who are all intelligent, dedicated, love the park and want nothing but the best for the park,” Dailey said. “They are making strides to learn about park operations and serving the community so the park can be the best it can possibly be.”

The group still has as its biggest task the hiring of a new director to replace Dave Imbrogno, who resigned in August. Bresko — whose official role is recreation and programs director — has been the interim director. He believes the board will have a new director chosen within the next two to three months.

Founded in 1891 by Rogers, the park covers 4,445 acres in Mahoning County and offers residents programs and activities as well as the beauty of nature to enjoy.

No longer is Mill Creek solely a destination for nature lovers, but instead has developed into a place that offers a variety of events and activities for all ages. Bringing people into the park is one way the park has managed to stay financially stable despite the economy.

“When I started as the director of recreation, we had one special event out of the department,” Bresko recalled. “Now we must have 12 to 15 special events and hundreds of other programs — all in an attempt to get people to come out and enjoy the MetroParks.”

The MetroParks received more than $10 million in 2009 through taxes, park revenues and grants.

The major sources of income are property taxes and state funding, directing more than $6.8 million into the park. That has remained consistent the last several years.

Despite a poor economy in 2009, visitors still came to the park.

In all, 29 park operations saw increases in revenues when compared with 2008. Eighteen operations had a decrease in revenue.

Revenue from park operations totaled $1.57 million in 2009, up $151,000 from 2008.

The park’s age, however, requires some major improvements to the historic and aging buildings, Bresko said.

“There are always short-range plans that get us year to year. But we do need to focus more long-term, and we have to prioritize.”

The park gets levies on the books for 15 years. The operating levy that Mill Creek is under won’t go back to voters until 2015.

Even with inflation, the money made through the levy stays a fixed sum. The duration of the levy has been a key part in keeping the money coming into the park consistent, and Ragan believes that the park can flourish in these tough times.

Since 2005, money for capital-equipment purchases has decreased three times while increasing only once. The amount has been as high as $781,000 in 2007. Only $125,000 was expended in 2009.

“The amount of capital depends on the needs, and, in 2010, it is going to lean toward the golf course,” Bresko said.

Grants and donations are an integral aspect of keeping money coming into the park.

“It’s going to be tough to get an additional levy or an increase in levy in the future. So we are looking at other means of funding,” Bresko added.

There was a significant drop-off in grant money coming into the MetroParks from 2008 to 2009. In ’08, the park received $1.89 million through grants, while last year the park received $189,000.

The majority of difference came in the Clean Ohio Grant for the purchase of property on Western Reserve Road. Treasurer Dave Christy said the grant was a one-time project.

Mill Creek’s cash king, however, is golf — bringing in almost $1.2 million last year, an increase of $112,000 from 2008. But it cost the MetroParks more than $1.4 million to run the golf department.

Miller said the goal is for the golf department to one day be self-sufficent. He added that rate increases will help reach that goal. Miller expects to hear some criticism for the rate increase but feels it will benefit the park in the long run and help with rising park expenses.

Residents will now pay $10, instead of $8.75, to play nine holes. The 18-hole cost rises from $17.50 to $20. Nonresident rates will increase to $12.50 for nine holes and $25 for 18.

“We evaluated our current golf-course conditions, did a thorough review of what other area golf courses are charging and then we looked at our needs in the future,” Miller said.

Top, Youngstown workers placed a barrier over a sewer opening as a safety precaution near Marshall Street in downtown Youngstown. Since June 19, 30 sewer-grate covers have been stolen in the downtown area. City workers are replacing them, but police are looking for the person or people who have been stealing them and attempting to sell them to scrap yards. Bottom, since June 19, 30 sewer-grate covers similar to this one have been stolen in the downtown area. City workers are replacing them, but police are looking for the person or people who have been stealing them and attempting to sell them to scrap yards. Photo by Bill Lewis/The Vindicator.

YOUNGSTOWN

Police are investigating the theft of 30 steel grates covering sewage catch basins that have been stolen from city streets between June 19 and 23.

Lewis Zoella, city sanitary department chief, notified police of the thefts. On the morning of June 19, seven of the grates were replaced at Tod Avenue and Irving Place in downtown Youngstown.

“Two days later, they were missing,” Zoella said.

Monday morning, six more grates were stolen from Oak Hill Avenue and Pepsi Place.

“They’re gonna keep taking them to someone who will pay for them,” Zoella said of the culprit or culprits.

Police have a suspect in mind, but no arrest has been made.

The missing grates are causing a safety issue for drivers and pedestrians.

“We could have a big accident,” Zoella said. “A car could flip over. Someone could fall in there.”

The 30 grate covers, weighing nearly 60 pounds each, are valued at a total of $2,000. Zoella said area scrap yards know not to take the grates, but, he added, “It’s all about the dollar.”

Scrap yards are prohibited from receiving stolen goods.

The value of the steel is estimated at around $200 per ton, according to scrap-yard owners. The total weight of the 30 covers is less than a ton, but the price the city pays to replace them is 10 times their worth in scrap, city officials added.

Recycling centers in the immediate area all state a firm policy on refusing any customer trying to bring in the grates.

One scrap-yard operation indicated that it refused many of these grates last week.

Officials have considered bolting the grates down. Zoella said, however, this would prevent accessibility in the winter when water overflows and freezes.

The city is using tar to adhere the grates to the catch basins to make removal difficult.

The city is stocking up on the grate covers, with Zoella saying 75 more have been ordered.

The city’s wastewater-department workers will continue to replace them, he said.

Picked up by The Vindicator May 18, 2010.

YOUNGSTOWN

The Western Reserve Transit Authority’s September expansion to a countywide service plan is paying off in ridership increases.

The authority originally estimated the expansion would bring an additional 50,000 riders for 2010. In the first five months of expanded service, however, 100,000 additional riders have taken the bus compared with the same period in 2009.

But the expansion brings concerns, said WRTA President Michael Bosela.

The new service means increased costs amid fluctuating sales-tax revenue.

Officials are pondering how to control costs and stay within their new budget.

Historically, the Mahoning transit system is no stranger to funding problems.

WRTA’s expenditures in 2006 were $1.5 million more than its revenue. The transit authority cut service 60 percent to compensate for this deficit.

Passage of a 0.25-percent sales tax in November 2008 has provided more than $3 million in additional revenue compared to what property taxes generated. Services have expanded to include the connecting current routes, the creation of other routes and an extensive curb-to-curb service.

The transition was completed in September.

“We’ve been poor for a long time,” said James Ferraro, transit authority executive director. “We think we’re kind of good at it. But, again, we haven’t been rich at all, so we’re not so good at that. We’re going to have to keep a keen eye on where we’re headed.”

Video and Story by Doug Livingston

YOUNGSTOWN

Inside downtown’s Federal Station bus terminal, a large brown spot outlines several ceiling tiles that have fallen from water damage.

A metal bar, once holding a tabletop, sticks up from the tile floor.

In the bathrooms, a foul odor permeates the graffiti-covered stalls.

Riders wait to board a bus at the Western Reserve Transit Authority at its station in downtown Youngstown. Some have criticized WRTA for allowing the downtown terminal to deteriorate as it spends $1.2 million to expand its administrative offices. Photo by Bill Lewis/ The Vindicator.

Outside, across the pothole-ridden parking lot, Youngstown resident Sachi Johnson waits for her bus under a glass-paneled enclosure. She wonders what Greyhound riders passing through Youngstown think of the city, viewed through the rust-stained windows of the Federal Street facility.

“They think that Youngstown is dirty,” she figures.

Johnson is one of more than 1 million people in the Mahoning Valley who will use the Western Reserve Transit Authority’s bus services this year.

WRTA was one of the Valley’s first agencies last year to secure federal stimulus money — $3.5 million.

Despite a crumbling central terminal, WRTA officials instead decided to expand administration offices on Mahoning Avenue for a price of $1.2 million. The move sparked criticism from local residents, and it continues with riders like Johnson.

“We’re not proud of it,” James Ferraro, WRTA executive director, said of the facility that opened in 1985.

Ferraro argues that improving the administrative office was vital to improving countywide service, which will reach more voters and taxpayers than improving Federal Station.

Ferraro said he doesn’t think people from Sebring or Green Township care about Federal Station.

“But I can tell you this much, that if their family and their neighbors aren’t benefiting [from the recently expanded WRTA service] then they’re gonna say, ‘Why should I support [the sales tax] next time?’” Ferraro said.

In November 2008, WRTA moved from a property tax to a .25-cent sales tax. The sales tax is up for renewal in 2013.

Conditions at Federal Station have worsened over the years.

A rider hurries to board a WRTA bus in downtown Youngstown. Photo by Bill Lewis/ The Vindicator

A total of $80,500 has been spent on the bathrooms over three restorations. The parking lot has been paved three times as well, totaling more than $425,000. A recent assessment of the parking lot, last repaired in 2005, calls for an additional $40,000 to repair.

One potential solution: Eliminate the terminal facility altogether, leaving a small area for Greyhound passengers. The rest of the property on West Federal Street would be open-air shelters for local riders.

Many riders oppose this idea, however.

“I don’t really like the idea of downsizing the building,” Youngstown resident Gene Shirilla, 55, says. “Winters can be harsh, and I don’t think anyone wants to stand outside.”

But Ferraro said people who ride the buses really don’t come into Federal Station. He estimates 16 percent of riders, or 172,000, will pass through facility this year.

The main offices on Mahoning Avenue had new needs, however.

September route expansions added 25 workers, bringing total staff to 83. New positions include 20 drivers, four maintenance staff and one telephone clerk. Two additional office positions are expected after the administrative building is completed.

“The [Mahoning] facility as it was wouldn’t permit us to bring on new people,” Ferraro explained. “There just wasn’t enough room.”

Officials also noted that conditions within the administrative building were inadequate, citing roof leaks, poor lighting and the presence of exhaust fumes.

The project, planned since 2005, is on schedule for completion in mid-June. The project includes the addition of a 960-square-foot area on the second floor to house a new board/conference room and an elevator to meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards.

Outside the complex, a sign placed at the request of board members touts this work as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — not the new sales tax.

The stimulus package provided $3.5 million for several capital projects — $2.1 million for the administrative office expansion, $990,000 for 12 buses and five minivans, $352,000 for operating assistance, $72,000 for surveillance cameras and $15,000 for bus shelters.

So far on the expansion, only $1.2 million has been contracted, leaving a surplus of about $1 million. WRTA will use the excess funds for future expenditures such as replacement and maintenance of buses.

The construction of Federal Station in 1985 allowed for shelter from the harsh, winter weather. Photo by Doug Livingston.

Before the construction of Federal Station, WRTA riders would wander Commerce Street waiting for their shuttle. The transit authority was proud to offer riders an indoor facility to get them out of the cold. But the cost of maintaining the station has become a concern.

“Hindsight says that it was a little more costly than we expected,” Ferraro admits.

Federal Station originally cost $1.6 million. Since then, WRTA has spent $728,424 on repairs, mostly paving and exterior construction.

Some repairs have been futile. Ferraro noted that vandals removed the water fountain and urinals from the walls four times each.

Any renovations to the building will not last long, he added.

Still, something has to be done.

WRTA is tentatively seeking $6 million through a second round of federal stimulus funds to address these concerns. Officials have applied for these funds and are awaiting a response from the federal government.

Those stimulus funds call for a $1.5 million renovation for Federal Station. The project is third on the priority list, behind a request for nearly $352,000 for operating assistance and $1.1 million to expand storage buildings to house the 12 buses purchased through the first round of stimulus spending.

Ferraro, however, is uncertain sufficient funds will be secured to accomplish every goal.

“We’re hoping to get close to $3 million,” he said. “I think that Federal Station needs too much work, so we’d probably have to do that first and just go without storing [vehicles] indoors.”

The transit authority also is considering either decreasing the size of Federal Station or tearing the building down, leaving a ticket office for Greyhound riders and outdoor shelters for local riders.

“I don’t believe they should get rid of it,” said Youngstown resident Bob Campbell, 57.

He uses a walker to navigate the parking lot. His bus waits could last as long as an hour. Campbell argues that Federal Station provides a safe shelter from the elements, bus traffic and occasional car that takes a wrong turn into the parking lot.

“I don’t want to be standing outside when it gets cold,” rider Tyeashea Taltoan says. “They should think about other people’s well-being.”

Councilwoman Annie Gillam, D-1st, said extreme Youngstown winters require a place where people can sit inside. She says she will contact the transit authority to discuss the station’s future.

Mayor Jay Williams called the terminal a significant presence downtown. He said he wants to be part of any decision on its future, and that he intends to stay in contact with WRTA.

By Melinda Gray

Originally published in the Vindicator on May 8, 2010.

Watch the video at http://www.vindy.com/videos/2010/may/10/1236/

A teen boy runs into view from the far side of the gym. He plants his foot solidly on the wall and flips himself over backward, landing safely on a mat.

Two more teen boys flip and fling themselves into a foam pit as parents watch.

Jordan McGee and Nate Keeling of Austintown take what they practice in the gym outside. Photo by Melinda Gray

Austintown residents Nate Keeling and Jordan McGee say You Tube videos first interested them in the sport known as parkour.

Parkour, sometimes called free running, means using the obstacles in one’s path to find a quicker, more efficient way through a landscape, be it urban or rural. Conceptualized in France, it gained international popularity over the last eight years via You Tube videos.

The teens attend open gym at Ohio Gymnastics Institute in Austintown to learn more about a sport, and then they hit the streets.

“We take what we practice here and do it outside,” said Keeling. Though, he says, there are very limited outdoor options to applying what they’ve learned.

Though countries such as the United Kingdom and Sweden are more used to and more lenient to the kids using the urban setting for fun, it’s not so accommodating here, yet.

Valley young people trying to “run” on the YSU campus are usually met with a police warning.

“They just tell us that we can’t do it there because if we get hurt, it would be their fault,” McGee said.

The Youngstown police are less strict, McGee added. “We basically try to ‘trick’ off of everything in sight.”

He said the police usually watch them for a short time and then move on.

Kathy McGee says that her son learning parkour is wonderful and exciting.

“I love it. It’s a great outlet for him, and very positive.”

OGI has open gym Friday and Sunday evenings. Ron Ferris, trainer and son of owner Ron Ferris Sr., said they are considering specialized parkour classes.

“We would set up the obstacles and practice the basic movements,” he said.

Parkour is commonly an underground activity, explaining why accident and injury statistics are almost nonexistent.

Kathy McGee said that she is not impervious to fear for her son’s safety. She finds her heart skips a beat when he jumps from a roof.

Parkour has been the confirmed cause of death for a 14-year-old Latvian boy who fell while trying to jump from one roof to another. A Sacramento teen’s deadly fall is being investigated as a parkour-related death.

Locally, doctors said they have not yet seen any parkour-related injuries. But participants should be careful, warns one doctor, to practice the basics and build strength before jumping from one roof to another.

“A young person feels invincible,” said Dr. James Brodell, a Warren orthopedic surgeon. “They feel they can’t get hurt.”

By DAN BROWN

thenewsoutlet.org

Picked up by The Vindicator May 11, 2010.

YOUNGSTOWN

North Side pool is always quiet this time of year.

No water, no lifeguards, no children swimming, no laughter or fun to fill the air during its offseason. The pool off Belmont Avenue sits dormant, waiting for the middle of June to open so it can entertain Youngstown youths.

But, because of city park and recreation budget cuts, the pool might remain quiet all summer.

The pool ended last year with a deficit of $82,203, and for a city looking to reduce a $3.5 million deficit in the 2010 budget, it made the waters at the recreation facility murky. Cutting the nonprofitable park and recreation programs would save the city $1 million.

Pastor Sylvia Jennings of Oak Baptist Church has been a Youngstown resident her entire life and has enjoyed taking her grandchildren to the pool. During a recent trip to the Dairy Queen adjacent to the pool, Jennings said she is troubled by the lack of alternatives should it not reopen.

“They need some place they can go, have fun and keep cool, and then you can know where they are and what’s going on,” the pastor said. “I believe if the pool stays open, that would help [prevent] some tendencies to get into other activities that aren’t acceptable.”

Tamboura Jenkins, left, and David Williams, both 12 and members of the Boys and Girls Club of Youngstown play a game of pool at the Boys and Girls Club. Photo by Bill Lewis/The Vindicator

She said there aren’t many other places for North Side children to go this summer other than Crandall and Wick parks.

Jason Whitehead, acting park and recreation director and the mayor’s chief of staff/secretary, doesn’t see North Side Pool’s becoming a nonfunctioning pool such as Borts on the West Side.

“It’s the mayor’s goal to make sure [North Side] is open every year,” Whitehead said.

Though Whitehead said he rejects the idea that not opening the pool will influence the crime rate, he acknowledged it could magnify the deeds of those already inclined to cause trouble.

“Overall, kids [who] come to the summer pool come to swim, are from good households and their parents hold them responsible for their actions,” Whitehead said.

Not everyone agrees, however, that closing the pool won’t have a big effect on area youths. Catherine McKelvey was a lifeguard at North Side Pool the past two summers and sees the kids swimming, socializing with friends, having races in the grass and doing a lot of dancing. She estimates she saw the same 100 to 500 children at the pool daily and noted the kids walk from the East and South sides just to take a swim.

“I think it’ll be a huge problem if the pool closes,” McKelvey said. “I don’t know what [the youth] would do if this pool didn’t open.”

McKelvey is realistic about what the pool is used for and knows that some parents around the community use it as a baby sitter, often dropping kids off when it opens and picking them up when it closes.

“It’s better for kids to come here than roam around on the streets,” McKelvey said. “I think the kids do stay out of trouble when they are here because there’s lifeguards and deputy sheriffs [to watch them].”

If the pool closes, area officials said there are other places available to children during the summer. The Boys and Girls Club of Youngstown welcomes all youths to join, said Melanie Costello, director of educational and program services.

“Right now, we are trying to grow membership,” Costello said.

North Side Pool charges $1 a day for a youth to swim. For the cost of seven trips to the pool, parents can purchase a membership to the Boys and Girls Club. The club is open from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the summer. Costello says the program serves children well, especially in the summer hours when school isn’t in session.

The organization provides structure for children while offering a variety of programs focused on sports, nutrition and health and other topics. The club also emphasizes character and leadership skills as well as volunteer work.

Costello used to take the kids to Borts every week, and she feels bad about North Side Pool’s problems. She said, however, the club is willing to shoulder more responsibility if the pool closes.

Whitehead said families must be creative in using community resources and groups available to them such as Neighborhood Ministries, the Jewish Community Center or Heart Reach Ministries.

The YMCA has scheduled a splash week from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. May 24-28. The free program will offer swimming lessons for children. The deadline to call and register is May 20.

“Maybe it’ll save a life someday,” said Mike Shaffer, the Youngstown Central YMCA branch director.

The organization also offers $5-per-day guest passes to swim in one of their pools and a $15 guest pass for the whole family. These are offered at both the Boardman and Youngstown facilities. The group is still in the discussion stage on planning more special events.

“We wanted to get more proactively involved,” Shaffer said.

He said it’s a shame that locations that need facilities such as North Side Pool are usually the ones that lose them.

Whitehead added that the city’s parks will be open this year along with tennis, basketball and baseball facilities. Though Whitehead said he understands the disappointment with the pool’s uncertainty, he suggested putting the problem in perspective.

“Do you lay off a police officer or cut a summer program?” Whitehead asked. “The tax revenue is not there; the money is not there.”

Whitehead emphasized no final decision has been made on the pool’s future.

North Side Pool originally opened in 1939. The city spent $1.28 million to renovate the facility and reopened it in 2007.

Liquor Up

By Melinda Gray

The population is dwindling and the economy is dipping, but neither are decreasing the Valley’s liquor sales — only the shelf from which we choose.

Mahoning County liquor purchases rose 1 percent last year when compared to 2008. It continues a trend over the last five years for Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties: As our population or our economy have dwindled, our liquor sales have not.

“Our sales are up; they’re terrific,” said Rich Saul, co-owner of Gino’s Drive Thru and Liquor on East Midlothian Boulevard in Youngstown. During a down economy, “people have more time to smoke and more time to drink,” he said.

Nick Catsoules, co-owner of Gino’s, said that as Youngstown’s steel industry waned, the blue-collar mentality of the people did not. “Local shift (workers) in the mill go and have a shot and a beer after work. It’s a way of life in the rust belt area we’ve grown up in.”

While Mahoning County saw a 1 percent growth in 2009, according to the Ohio Department of Commerce, Division of Liquor Control, retail liquor sales in Trumbull and Columbiana counties are up 2 percent from 2008.

The long-term numbers tell the same story.

The Valley, overall, has seen an 8-percent increase in liquor sales over the last five years with Columbiana County the highest at 23 percent. Trumbull County is next with a 7 percent, followed by Mahoning County with a 6 percent increase.

For all of Ohio, liquor sales were $734.8 million in 2009, up from $697.7 million in 2008.

Though sales are up, some store owners admit that people are buying cheaper alcohol.

“They are still coming in, they are just buying down,” said Jane Carelly, wife of The Beverage House owner Sam Carelly.

Saul agrees that people are downsizing on cost, for example, going from Grey Goose to Smirnoff. Customers are buying for value to make their dollar go farther, “like a Wal-Mart,” he said.

But not every customer compromises.

“Generation X goes for the gusto. They want the high end, whether they can afford it or not. They want the Grey Goose. They want the Hennessy. They want the Dom Perignon,” said Catsoules.

One possible boost for liquor store sales is the 2006 indoor smoking ban for restaurants and bars.

“You can smoke at home. That really hurt the bars bad,” said Catsoules.

Gino’s, one of six liquor stores in Youngstown, is not the only store to see an increase in 2009, but they did see more of a hike than any of the other stores. “In 2009, our liquor sales were up 31⁄2 percent,” said Saul.

He attributes this boost in sales, in part, to the location of his store and his attempts at easing the financial burden on his patrons. He offers frequent sales to get people in the door, he said.

Saul expressed surprise that sales stay high despite the loss of population and high unemployment rate. But Youngstown State University psychology professor Steve Ellyson said it’s not all that surprising. Using alcohol is like self-medicating, he said.

“When reality gets to be a bit much or things get stressful, people use (alcohol) to dull down the pain.”

A 2009 Gallup poll shows confirms that point. In recent years as the economy has fluctuated, alcohol sales and consumption have hit around 65 percent of Americans drinking. In good economic times, the number of Americans drinking some form of alcoholic beverage never drops below 55 percent.

“People use it as an anti-depressant to temporarily escape,” Ellyson said.

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By CHRISTINE KEELING

and DOUG LIVINGSTON

TheNewsOutlet.org

Picked up by The Vindicator April 9, 2010.

LIBERTY

Twenty-six years ago, a 3-year-old boy who spoke scattered English and fluent Italian led a tour of elderly women through his parents’ store.

He paraded them up and down the aisles telling them about the pizzelles, cappicola, and his favorite, mortadella — an Italian bologna.

Frank Occhibove literally grew up in the aisles of Jimmy’s Italian Specialties, which his parents started in his grandfather’s garage on West Federal Street in Youngstown in 1974. Here Occhibove, manager of the store on Belmont Avenue in Liberty, stands in front of its bakery. Photo by Geoffrey Hauschild/The Vindicator.

The new location, which moved from a site across the street three years ago, features a more elaborate bakery, deli, pizza shop and grocery store.

Frank Occhibove’s childhood was surrounded by pasta, pastries, cash registers and customers.

“I grew up in the store,” said Occhibove, now 28 and manager of his family’s store, Jimmy’s Italian Specialties of Liberty.

“I remember when I was like 3 or 4 … I would be in the office in the back on the floor on this little cot sleeping, taking my nap times in the middle of the day because my parents brought me to this store.”

He said his parents, Jim and Irene, opened the business in a fairly unorthodox way.

“They opened up in my grandparents’ garage. And that was on West Federal Street in Brier Hill, back in ’74.”

Six years later, Frank Occhibove was born, and the store was starting to grow. He played in the aisles of the store. He mingled with the customers and made himself useful.

Sometimes he would slip past his parents, who were busy working.

“My parents would say, ‘Where’s Frank?’… They didn’t know where I was. I’d be up front in the middle of the store talking to customers and showing them how to use this certain machine and how to do this and that.”

He tries to hold back a chuckle that turns into a body-shaking laugh.

“But it was a lot of fun. I remember loving when people would come in.”

Occhibove attended Youngstown State University but never graduated.

“I never really even had a major,” he said. “I was there for three and a half years … I wanted to be a school teacher or, I don’t even know.”

There isn’t an ounce of regret in his decision to work at the family business.

“I’m doing this now,” he said. “This is what I always wanted to do. It’s in [my] blood.”

Frank recalls the dedication that his family poured into creation of the business.

“It was a family thing. If someone needed help with this or that, everyone just pitched in. My grandfather and my dad worked at Valley Molding in Cleveland. They would drive to Cleveland every day.”

After the family business was started, Occhibove said they still worked in the mill until things picked up.

He knows that his place is here in Liberty at this store.

“When we decided to make the big move to this store, we could have really went anywhere,” he states. “But we decided to move a half a block away [from Colonial Plaza] because this is where our lifeblood is, right here in Liberty.”

The new store on Belmont opened in 2007 and offers more exposure to the customers.

“We have a lot of good friendships made through the store,” he says.

He said he tries to participate in the community as much as he can.

“I always ask them what we are able to do to help,” said Frank of the township officials who visit there. He is happy to give back to a community that has given his family so much. “The township has really been here to support us even through tough times,” he says.

Lt. Cathy Macchione of the Liberty Fire Department said, “We all go there.”

She said that between Monday and Friday, members of the department order lunch from Jimmy’s two or three of those days.

Occhibove admits business was not thriving before the holidays and that the close-knit clientele was there for support, but since the beginning of the year it has been pretty steady.

“Without a doubt, we are doing better here than at the old location,” Occhibove said.

With the option of eating anything he wishes from the store, Frank admits that, “usually I just have an old fashioned sandwich with some cappicola, salami and cheese and nice hot peppers, or pasta.”

Glancing downward at his round stomach, he confessed: “I’ll eat pasta every day.”

He said that Jimmy’s Italian Specialties is many things — a bakery, a deli, a pizza shop and a grocery store.

He hopes to use the experience he has gained working at his parents’ store and open a store of his own one day.

“In the future, I do see myself doing something on a smaller scale, maybe a bakery.”

For now, though, he said he is content with his place in the family and the business. He smiles and says: “This is my life.”

The NewsOutlet is a joint media venture by student and professional journalists and is a collaboration of Youngstown State University, WYSU radio and The Vindicator.

By DOUG LIVINGSTON

Picked up by The Vindicator March 5, 2010.

Bob Kover, a salesman at Denny's Auto Sales on South Ave in Youngstown. Photo by William Lewis/The Vindicator.

Three men endure a cold Mahoning Valley winter morning as they shuffle cars from the sanctuary of garages and chain-linked yards to a barren field across South Avenue.

The cars are one man’s livelihood.

“You gotta protect your inventory,” Denny Moore said.

Moore owns Denny’s Auto Sales, 1204 South Ave.

If you want to stay in business in his neighborhood, protecting your inventory is essential.

About 20 cars are shuffled together each night inside three garages and a parking lot that surrounds a humble sales office.

You cannot walk between the cars — that’s how tightly they’re packed together.

Denny started this after someone broke in, loosened the lug nuts on the aluminum rims and shook the cars until the wheels fell off. When Moore arrived the next morning, nine cars sat on their axles — two wheels missing from each.

“Anytime [recycling prices for] scrap aluminum or catalytic converters go up, we get pounded,” said Bob Kover, a Denny’s sales associate.

Moore, a South Side native, is a natural in the art of haggling.

At 19, he purchased a 1974 Ford LTD with a $175 check he received for mowing lawns and doing yard work. After a little mechanical work, he sold that car, doubling his money.

“I actually started just buying cars on my own,” Moore said, “and slowly worked into a dealership.”

Moore purchased the corner area that houses his car lot in 1988.

It’s a bit more at ease one block north.

Gary and Jack Frank arrive at their family-owned parts store around 7:30 a.m., and the two expect their store to be unscathed. They rely on the neighborhood they have served for 40 years.

“The neighborhood watches out for each other,” Gary said. “And they watch out for our business because they’re our friends.”

Hundreds of commuters take the South Avenue exit off Interstate 680 toward Youngstown every day.

They drive by dilapidated, cinder-block buildings with neon signs that burnt out years ago. Graffiti adorns most buildings as most retailers have folded. They have fled an area plagued by crime and poverty.

But sprinkled in between are the few businesses that have found a way to survive.

Old-school and owner-operated, these retailers are glad they’re still around, but wary of the future.

Leaning against the sales counter at Frank’s Auto Parts, 1014 South Ave., Jack, 56, glances over his shoulder at the line of inventory racks that hold what his brother estimates to be “a couple hundred-thousand parts.” The books detail $200,000 in products, but the shelves tell a story from another age.

“My dad started this business with maybe like $5,000,” said Jack. “He took a chance. [Then] he turned it over to me and my brother.”

Jack Frank Sr. is now 81, retired and enjoying the warm weather in Florida. His boys took over in 1995.

Gary, 52, started helping his father when he was 12.

Jack and Gary graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School on the South Side before taking full-time positions at the family business.

Randy Ware planted a flower garden along the sidewalk in front of Ware’s Automotive, 906 South Ave., to attract customers. It’s important to stand out on South Avenue, he said. Photo by William Lewis/The Vindicator.

At the other end of the block from Frank’s is Randy Ware’s car repair shop, Ware’s Automotive, at 906 South Ave.

He planted a flower garden along the sidewalk out front to attract customers. It’s important to stand out on South Avenue, he said.

Ware rented the garage in 1994 and secured a land contract for the property in 2000.

He first started in the car-repair business in 1981 in a rented garage on Hillman Street. He was 20, armed with only a toolbox.

Through 40 years of service, Frank’s Auto Parts has seen tough economic times, among the worst being the traffic-stopping South Avenue bridge closing of 1986.

Rich Yaslik is the store’s only other employee — answering the phone, punching in orders on the computer or stocking shelves. There’s always stocking to do. Yaslik, 40, has worked at the store since 1993.

The store stocks parts for typical Youngstown vehicles: domestic and older models — cars put back together to keep running.

Half of its sales come from local car dealers and garages. The other half are from walk-ins.

Keeping it local is vital for Moore’s sales, too.

“Seventy-five percent of my business is word of mouth,” Moore said. His business card reads: “Where the cars speak for themselves.”

Moore’s humble, low-income clientele influence the 15 to 20 cars he buys each week from an auction in Washington, Pa. He sells about 65 cars each month.

Ware moved to the neighborhood while the bridge was still closed. Low traffic stifled business. During times like those, he relied on his steady customers.

Jack Frank, left, and Gary Frank run Frank’s Auto Parts, 1014 South Ave., and rely on the neighborhood they have served for 40 years. “The neighborhood watches out for each other,” Gary said. “And they watch out for our business because they’re our friends.” Photo by William Lewis/The Vindicator.

His clients have followed his business from its original location on the South Side, then to Belmont Avenue, Market Street and finally South Avenue.

Business is slow right now at Ware’s.

Stock parts ranging from $15 to $400 lie in their original, dust-covered packaging. Ware can no longer stock items in the hope of using them someday. Buy what you need, when you need it, is his philosophy.

In order to survive, Ware, 50, tows vehicles, demolishes buildings and lays brick to supplement his living.

Like Denny’s daily security shuffle, Ware has to make adjustments to protect his inventory. The front door stays locked, even during business hours. Ring the buzzer for service.

The area businesses have an image that reflects the community and the customers.

You won’t find polished store displays, flashing signs, lavish waiting rooms or waxed floors at any of these South Avenue stores.

If you didn’t know Moore or his staff, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish the salesmen from the customers at Denny’s. Everyone is wearing stocking caps and hooded sweatshirts. It’s a stretch from auto retailers you might find in Boardman.

“I can’t talk to people in Boardman,” Moore said. “They see a little rust on the car, and they’re gone.”

What you will see at Moore’s dealership is a little negotiating.

“Now you’re being a little picky for $1,100, aren’t you?” Moore says to a difficult customer.

Moore offers up a Cavalier.

“I don’t want no Cavalier,” the man says.

“I got an Oldsmobile down here,” Moore says.

“I just got rid of an Olds,” the man says.

The wheeling and dealing ends as the empty-handed customer leaves.

Two generations and 40 years later, Frank’s Auto Parts faces a new dilemma.

Gary has raised twin girls. One is living on the East Coast while the other is attending college in Columbus.

“They’re not coming back here,” Gary said with an air of agitation and thoughtful pride.

As for Jack, his daughter and son are likely candidates for college.

But neither one is saddened by their children’s disinterest in the family business. They appreciate the opportunity their father gave them and are proud to provide a better life, a better choice, for their children.

Ware plans on letting his business go to a family member — maybe his son. Only one problem: His son is more interested in $1,600 rims for his car than taking over the business.

When Moore looks through the smudged window across from his desk, he sees past the run-down building next door.

South Avenue is not only home for his business; he has set his sights on expanding the car lot and purchasing land just down the street.

“Not too far,” Moore said.