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Orchids and Onions

ORCHID: To the Kyrsten Elizabeth Studer Foundation for once again this year holding “Kyrsten’s Kloset,” an event that gives away free dresses to local girls for prom. In its fourth year now, the event has provided many local girls with attire they need to attend this special high school event. The only requirement to receive a dress is signing a pledge to not drink and drive. The foundation’s namesake was killed by a drunk driver in 2003 when she was 14.

ORCHID: To members of Boy Scout Troop 101 who recently held a spaghetti dinner fundraiser to raise money for the troop and build an equipment building at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Warren.

ORCHID: To those who organized and participated in the third annual “Hope for Recovery from Addiction” seminar at Kent State University at Trumbull. Drug addiction is a matter that deserves our attention, especially with Trumbull County last year experiencing a record number of drug-related overdose deaths.

ORCHID: To Warren’s Water Department for putting into place a way to educate residents about water quality issues, including when tests reveal high levels of lead.

ONION: To Warren’s Water Department because it’s taken seven years to institute this type of program. The city in 2008 received a violation from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for failing to notify customers of high lead levels in tested homes.

editorial@tribtoday.com

Orchids and Onions

ORCHID: To Howland High School seniors Ryan Jones and Leah Pollifrone, who coordinated the idea, and to all the other Howland students who volunteer in the “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” club. The organization matches athletes and honor students to students with special needs in an effort to ensure everyone has a friend.

ORCHID: To Mathews Board of Education for having the forethought to ask for public input and involvement now – well in advance of any request for a bond issue to build a new school building. They should continue seeking public input, use it to make a decision and then let voters decide the fate.

ONION: To Niles administrators, Mayor Tom Scarnecchia and Service Director Jim DePasquale, for even considering giving the entire city an extra paid day off for Easter without approaching the fiscal oversight commission or council about the idea. After much backlash, they came to their senses and rescinded the idea. As Councilman Barry Steffey put it, the cash-strapped city did not win the lottery with Tuesday’s passage of a 0.5 percent income tax; it won residents’ trust. The move would have sent the message that it’s just the same old Niles.

ORCHID: To all the local high school students who have applied their learning experience at the Iowa caucuses last month to first-hand involvement in the political process back home by proudly volunteering on campaigns for Tuesday’s election.

ORCHID: To dozens of area residents who shed hair and raised more than $12,500 at last week’s St. Baldrick’s head-shaving event at O’Donold’s Irish Pub & Grille. The funds go to fight childhood cancer.

editorial@tribtoday.com

Orchids and Onions

ORCHID: To Riki Kaiser, the Bloomfield Middle School student who this week won the Tribune Chronicle Spelling Bee and who will go on to represent the area in May in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Orchid, also, to all local spellers in Monday’s event. They all are champions!

ORCHID: To the nine people who graduated this week from Trumbull County Drug Court, meaning they completed a year’s worth of counseling, drug testing and learning new paths to recovery. Let’s hope they can stay clean and sober and be rewarded with expungement of their non-felony drug charges.

ONION: To the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for continuing to allow an increasing amount of frack waste to be trucked into Ohio from out of state. While horizontal drilling into the Utica Shale has decreased in northeast Ohio, frack waste intake still increased in the state by more than 15 percent last year, according to a recent report.

ORCHID: To the three Trumbull and Mahoning County vocational schools that netted improved results on Ohio’s school report cards released recently. Trumbull Career and Technical Center, Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, and Choffin Career and Technical Center all did well while acknowledging challenges and still striving to continue to do better.

ORCHID: To all the donors who helped make United Way of Trumbull County’s 2015 giving campaign a success. The agency exceeded its goal by raising $923,873 in contributions.

editorial@tribtoday.com

Orchids and Onions

l ORCHID: To Orange Village Care Center Administrator David Burnham for keeping the situation calm and residents safe when a frantic, shoeless, disheveled Marvin Jules showed up Feb. 22 at the residential care facility. Jules was apprehended by police and charged in a shooting, but the only thing Burnham had on his mind was keeping his staff and residents safe.

l ORCHID: To the Trumbull County commissioners, engineer’s office and Fowler Township for striking an agreement that is lawful, creative and beneficial to taxpayers. Fowler will trade unused road paving equipment worth $16,000 to Trumbull County in exchange for material and labor credit on future projects. The deal is allowable under Ohio Revised Code and just makes good sense.

l ONION: To Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, for engaging in childish name-calling and ridiculous verbal attacks on one another. If our kids were acting this way, we would call it bullying and they’d be punished. Is this really the way we expect men to act who are vying to become leader of the free world?

l ORCHID: To volunteers who participated recently in the “Warming Warren” winter clothing distribution. The event offered warm clothing and accessories along with hot soup to the needy in Warren. Also distributed were 450 bags, each containing a hat, gloves, scarf, socks and a hand warmer.

l ORCHID: To all the volunteer readers who spent time in area elementary school classrooms this week, reading to the children as part of United Way of Trumbull County’s Reading Great by 8 Literacy Initiative and Dr. Seuss Day, planned to help show young children that reading is fun.

editorial@tribtoday.com

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