Quality Of Life As A Right

• Addressing our downtown parking, while balancing walkability, the safe and responsible utilization of public transportation, and cycling infrastructure.

• Establishing a city-wide standard and holding accountability to government agencies and utility companies for things like roadway street lighting, and road paving and pothole repair standards.

• Strengthening the fight to address litter, debris, and illegal dumping, further engaging residents, neighborhood groups, block watches and small businesses alike to create a more welcoming, well-maintained environment.

Empowering the people of Youngstown is not only for the purpose of improving our living standards, it’s for influencing the laws that govern us. It is to have proper respect and support for, and from, the safety forces that serve and protect us and our City. A deep pride in our city leads to more and more residents, happily living here, while working to improve our very own neighborhoods together. 

• Safe Communities means aggressively working towards well paid, well trained, well staffed Police, Fire & EMS departments who happily choose to pursue a career of work and even residence here. Incorporating resources around mental health, drug addition, the un-housed and those not well, must be seen as a vital part of the work of making safer communities.

• We must make a significant investment in: more proactive community policing through strategic partnerships, AND creating a strong and sustainable community culture and bond, where residents boldly participate in helping to also reduce Youngstown’s crime. We can no longer withhold critical investigative information here, under a “no snitching” code. We can no longer allow folks to provide safe harbor to those committing violent crimes. We must work to avoid any injustice. But we also need to work towards swifter legal justice; starting with the most challenging issues on our streets. This includes the critical evidence needed to solve/prosecute crime in our neighborhoods. It demands more folks step forward to help. It begs for witnesses to speak up. It requires the cooperation of all who can help to properly provide justice.

The vast majority of people who live in our Youngstown neighborhoods are not involved in violent crime. A very small number of people in our area  commit many of the recorded homicides. Much of our here violence is not random. It is open happening from those who are well acquainted with one another. It’s out of familiarity that we’re seeing domestic violence, assault, gun violence and murder.

Three identified areas of violence we must deal with before they escalate and lead to crime:

1. verbal altercations leading to physical fights 2. retaliation & revenge 3. illegal drug activity & drug abuse. 

We must proactively get ALL residents, who choose to live, work and play HERE, to choose the route of being law abiding, community driven, contributing citizens.

WE KNOW OUR YOUTH ARE AT RISK. Ways that can help reduce this risk include a focus on getting our scholars to school, properly educated and ultimately gainfully employed as productive residents. We must address issues of mental health, abuse/trauma, poverty and proactively provide de-escalation efforts as a critical solution to some of our violent crime.

What’s required in Youngstown are strategic resources, relevant opportunities, more positive exposure to create, find, and provide opportunity for our youth to obtain skills and to gainfully employ our young adult men. We get them to put the down violence when we have the chance to provide a skill, a trade, and job – (plus give them an identity and hope).

• Community Safety Funds will make available resources and real-time help for community-based organizations to enroll, sustain and scale their essential, lifesaving work of restoring our neighborhoods.

• Strengthening our frontline community groups who are “foot soldiers” to do the work of restoring neighborhoods through committed and well-resourced, Block Watches, Neighborhood Associations and Community Groups.

• Deeper investment: by both City Hall and us all, in the areas of Code Enforcement, Renter Rights / Landlord Education and Quality of Life Standards/Commitments, and local Home Ownership education and initiatives. We need more reward/recognition of those who do beautify our city.