Travels in Y'Town IV

-- Still have not come with a good, workable, eye catching title. A new head shot is on the way, though.

-- Was coming back to Warren from making my rounds this afternoon and saw a guy walking up East Market Street in Warren wearing a pair of shorts. Just the thought of that gives me goosebumps.

-- The police scanner is quiet tonight, so that story we ran today on the crime being down in 2007 in Youngstown must be right. The numbers were still somewhat of a surprise to me, although I did notice the usual holiday blitz of crime was down on '07, and a department staffer confirmed my thought by telling me that crime was down in the last quarter of the year.

-- I noticed the WRTA is kicking off their county wide tax campaign, but I do not have much of it succeeding. Outlying areas of the county are loath to vote for taxes -- witness several failed sales tax campaigns -- and I just can't see them voting for something that most of them will probably never use.

I'm curious if this tax fails, if they'll put it back on the ballot again.

-- Another tax on the ballot is the city school levy, which is on for the third time. I have never seen this much anger at a ballot issue from people than from this one, and the complaints range from too many administrators to ineffective discipline of unruly students to simply being unable to afford the 9.5 mills they are asking for.

Actually, venom is a better word than anger, and I don't see the levy passing again. In fact, I don't know if I ever see it passing. I think a complete overhaul in staff may be the only thing that would change voters' minds, and even that might not do the trick because of the hard economic times in the city.

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy championship Sunday (I'm picking the Pats and the Pack -- I know, I'm really going out on a limb). I have a personal day Tuesday so I'll check back in Wednesday.