Reminder: No parking on grass in Warren

DEAR EDITOR:

As we approach the summer in Warren, “The City of Festivals,” I wanted to remind Mayor Doug Franklin of the policy listed on his city’s very own application for having events on Courthouse Square. The city does not allow cars to be parked on the grass when people are conducting set-up and tear-down for events. In fact, a $100.00 per vehicle fine is listed as a penalty. Wow!

Every summer event has plenty of people ignoring this policy. Calls to City Hall are met with no action. Sad! I know a retired city operations employee who tells me that former Mayor Michael O’Brien would send him down to tell people to move their vehicles when he heard that parking on the grass was happening. Why can’t Mayor Franklin enforce this policy? Is he still afraid of being accused of “only caring about downtown?” LOL.

Anyone who looks at the town green that is Warren’s Courthouse Square can see the damage that years of events have put on it. Lots of brown areas where grass cannot grow that lines up exactly around where summer festival concession trailers set up. Dozens of feet of dirt where one event puts up their “beer tent.” Wear and tear around the not-very-historically accurate bocce court. Cracked sidewalks from vehicles driving over them. The town green isn’t very green in lots of places thanks to decades of being used as an event venue. Geez, if only the city had something like a park with an amphitheater where events could be hosted… If only…

Unless this administration wants to pony up the money to fix Courthouse Square maybe they should be more invested in curtailing further damage to it. Just a thought. Prevention is free! If you see cars parked on the grass on Warren’s historic Courthouse Square this summer, give a call to the mayor’s office at 330-841-2601 and ask Mayor William “Doug” Franklin to enforce his own policy.

JOSHUA NATIVIO

Warren

Casey’s Law is on the books for a reason

DEAR EDITOR:

I have an adult daughter who has been down the road of addiction. In fact there was a “Giving Thanks” article by Renee Fox in the November 2015 Thanksgiving Day Tribune Chronicle. As a parent, the article was to give credit to the EMTs and St. Elizabeth Hospital in bringing her back to life after numerous doses of Narcan.

This sad story didn’t end there. Jessica has become homeless and has had serious probation violations. I came upon a story of a mother in Kentucky that had an adult son addicted to heroin. This mother had no leverage to help her son until it was too late. After he died she brought forth in front of the courts to bring a law that would help parents/loved ones to prove that their adult loved one needed court-ordered rehab/mental health.

Casey’s Law is now a law in Ohio. However, it seems that the Trumbull County courts are not educated on Casey’s Law. I learned that you need to start with Probate Court. But when I did go to Trumbull County Probate Court they did not know about Casey’s Law. Really? Instead of the courts educating themselves, it has fallen on deafened ears.

Everyone just turns their shoulders instead of addressing the obvious law. I need help for my daughter. I want the local courts to be aware and apply Casey’s Law. If I can’t get help in Trumbull County, I will pursue every avenue to hopefully save my daughter. This letter is to help others in this situation.

LINDA DANN

Cortland

Trump is throwing our money away

DEAR EDITOR:

Donald Trump is now throwing the criminality of this administration right smack into our faces. Along with his insider trading, making over a billion personally already while occupying the White House, blowing gobs of money on absolute junk and gilded crap not only in the White House but around the DC area, (he can use all of the gold he wants, it does not breed culture) building monuments to himself with our money, and his pictures on DC buildings.

Trump is blatantly stealing money claiming he and his family and his criminal “‘friends” are owed for grievances. He wants one billion for the ‘extras’ in the White House, (remember this was to cost a $200 million dollar donation from pals) and NOW has had the audacity to claim money to pay for the ‘weaponization’ fund, to actually pay criminals for being criminals! Any criminal loyal to him in any way could get paid just for being a criminal! Do his voters not see the absolute horrifying criminality? Where are their blinders? Are they waiting to get on this payroll?

Every day is a new mess and he hasn’t “decided” in his words what he will do with his war. We are in a serious war with serious threats coming from Iran. Maybe bomb them, maybe not. Attack Cuba, maybe not. He seems not to know what is going on other than he wants what he wants. Well, I am sure a lot of Americans would also like some “extras,” but money is scarce for so many and Trump simply does not care. He is spending money like a drunken sailor on what he wants, not what we need, and needs should “trump” wants, all day.

JEANNE McDERMOTT

Liberty

Exit Graphite One, enter Titanium Valley

DEAR EDITOR:

Our Mahoning Valley should be disappointed because Graphite One is not going to construct a $1.4 billion complex in Weathersfield Township to process graphite for use in electric vehicles, etc.

However, the great news is that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed that there is no “Brownfield Legacy,” requiring expensive clean-up. This site is as “shovel ready” as a “Greenfield” never-developed site.

This site is large enough to have held 88 buildings for Graphite One, and should become a multiple-occupant industrial park: acquired, financed, built, and managed by the Western Reserve Port Authority (WRPA.)

Contact our Regional Chamber of Commerce to conduct targeted marketing effort for this site to companies who manufacture products from titanium.

The Titanium Institute, has a directory of companies making products from titanium.

Literally down the road from the Graphite One site is Howmet Aerospace. They produce pure titanium and titanium alloys from titanium tetrachloride (aka “titanium sponge”) that is made from titanium oxide ore.

Between Howmet Aerospace and the Graphite One site are hundreds more acres of Industrially-Zoned, undeveloped “Greenfield” sites, with railroad access. Those hundreds of acres should also become a large, productive industrial park: acquired, financed, built, and managed by the WRPA.

Our Regional Chamber staff should confer with the extremely capable management of Howmet about who their customers are, and enlist their help in attracting their customers here, to Howmet Aerospace’s neighborhood.

Howmet’s customers would benefit from extremely lowered in-bound transportation costs at this Weathersfield site. Howmet would benefit by bringing their customers here, where they are not likely to stray away to Howmet’s competition.

There are only a few facilities like this producing pure titanium on our planet, and we have one in our Mahoning Valley.

Although we have this unique resource, we have not developed the secondary industries to process this raw material into finished products the way that our basic steel attracted steel fabrication plants and automobile production.

We offer everything needed to dominate the titanium industry east of the Mississippi River:

• An inventory of vacant industrial buildings and buildable sites,

• Extensive railroad and truck routes,

• A supply chain of industrial vendors with materials and equipment.

• An industrially trained workforce, with workforce training facilities.

The potential of the titanium industry as a driving economic force in our communities should prove to be as important as steel, aluminum, copper and other basic metals already have.

This is what I envisioned when I wrote my Tribune Chronicle column titled: “Time to build ‘Titanium Valley'” that was published by the Tribune on Sept. 29, 2011.

JAMES J. PIRKO

Youngstown

Trump’s rise and fall mirrors Ozymandias

DEAR EDITOR:

I recoil from the daily barrage of Trump’s self-aggrandizement — the ballroom, the arch, the Kennedy Center, the dollar bill, the passports, etc. Yet, I do find myself remembering a sonnet published by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1818.

I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone”

Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

How prescient this poem is for today! As it was for other power-hungry and arrogant rulers who found themselves without the legacy they so craved. It brings me comfort to know that someday we will be able to celebrate the demise of Trump’s regime and removal of the trappings of his hubris.

KATHY JULIANO

Medina

Supreme Court guts another piece of VRA

DEAR EDITOR:

The Supreme Court recently gutted another major piece of the Voting Rights Act, the civil rights law’s guarantee that communities of color have the right to fair congressional districts where they can elect a candidate of their choice. It’s allowing politicians to gerrymander people of color into silence.

Over the past two decades, the Voting Rights Act has gone from near-unanimous bipartisan support to the main target for politicians who don’t want to defend their policy decisions to voters — and Supreme Court justices willing to do their dirty work.

By the letter of the law, this case should have been a clear win for the pro-voter side. But the Court has abandoned its duty to enforce the Voting Rights Act — or defend basic civil rights.

This ruling will embolden those who prefer dictatorship to democracy. It must be a wake-up call that we can’t take a free and fair 2026 election for granted. So, we must demand that Congress pass new voting rights legislation. If neither the court nor our elected lawmakers will defend our rights, then it’s up to the rest of us to ensure power remains with We the People. Thankfully, Americans are rising up to do that.

CHARLOTTE ONDERICK

Stow