V&M and the Youngstown Disease

This news of a possible expansion at V&M Star Steel in Brier Hill that could bring up to 500 new jobs has me a little wary.

Call it Youngstown Disease. One of the symptoms: Fearful of being burned again.

After all, we've been down this road before. There was a zeppelin factory, the Avanti car factory, the Pentagon payroll center, a brewery and other pie in the sky, utopian pipe dreams that never work out but seem like great ideas at the time.

I hope I am wrong. I hope everything works out the way they say and that these new jobs and expansion come to frution and the local economy gets a well deserved shot in the arm.

The plan, at least what I know of it, sounds good. V&M will take advantage of high energy prices that are fueling a boom for natural gas drilling, for which V&M makes seemless pipes for.

Although they are keeping their plans as closely guarded as Vice President Cheney's secret location, the people behind the scenes seem to know what they are doing and it looks like this is not another Phar Mor/nobody's minding the business situation.

And the mayors of Girard and Youngstown are actually working together for the common good, which would benefit both cities. Talk about strange? Politicians actually putting aside turf and ego to allow both sides to win?

Yet, something gnaws at me the longer we go and the expansion is still refered to as ``proposed.' Why is so much being kept in the dark?

Until they put a shovel in the ground, I'll still be suffering from Youngstown Disease. The cure? A shoveful of dirt from Brier Hill.