City Council Meeting - Wednesday, January 4

[jay]

At a minimum, council should announce the agenda in advance so interested parties could attend the meeting. 

AND.....being forced to sign up the week before to speak at a meeting is ridiculous if you do not know what is on the agenda.

[Rick Rowlands]

Maybe Ytown can move into the 21st century and stream the video of their council meetings on the Internet.   

[Towntalk]

Jay, you might be too young to remenber when all City Council meeting were broadcast on WKBN radio. It might not be a bad idea for one of the area's AM stations to broadcast the Council Meetings again even if it was one of the smaller stations, but unfortunately WASN nor WGFT are not licensed for night operation, but if enough people were to write a brief letter to Bill Kelly at WKBN and brought it up on the Dan Rivers Show, since Rivers is WKBN's Program Director, they might be convinced to broadcast Council meetings again.

[jay]

It's sad to say but most meetings of city council are poorly attended.  We are just an apathetic community for the most part.  It was refreshing to see the spectator seats almost filled to capacity for this past meeting though.

I often think about how many outsiders are now employed by the city these days. They work for us but won't live in our community.  Many are administration appointees and sit in the council chambers during council meetings.

[Towntalk]

Never even implied that they were hippies, but I am of the firm and uncompromising opinion that since the outsiders have no say in our business that they had no business there taking up space that would have better been occupied by Youngstown citizens.

You would not tolerate for a single moment an outsider poking their nose into your families business, and you would be on firm ground, and the same is true of City Council.

You don't see Youngstowners poking their noses into Boardman Trustee business.

If Council meetings were held in Powers Auditorium that would be a horse of a different feather, but there are only so many seats in Council Chambers.

The news media did a great job covering the meeting so there was no reason why they should have been there except to butt in where they have no legitimate business, and no argument will ever change my mind.

If City Council wanted a meeting open to all the residents on the county, they should have held the meeting at Powers and had the County Commissioners there with them, and left time open for a Q&A period, but the D-L matter was but one topic and even that was a Sense Of Council Resolution. It has no power of enforcement according to WKBN 27 News.

[jay]

I'm sure many of those people were residents of Youngstown. 

The earthquake was felt by residents from many parts of the Mahoning Valley.  I do understand everyone's concern no matter where they live.

The audience looked like older people to me.  I don't think they were young jobless hippie bums.

[Towntalk]

How many of those OY folks were actual Youngstown residents? How many were out of town interlopers?

[jay]

The Occupy Youngstown people must have listened to the suggestion of the newspaper editor.  About 40 of them occupied the city council chambers during the council meeting.

[jay]

Youngstown City Council Meeting

Wednesday, January 4, 5:30 p.m.

- Location -
City Council Chambers
6th Floor
City Hall
26 S. Phelps Street
Downtown Youngstown