Tue, May 13 2008
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Published March 20, 2008 01:35 pm - If you read Carl Feather’s“Reality Check” series over the past few weeks, you experienced a pretty good outline of our problems and even some solutions. County must do more to improve economy A Robert Lebzelter column for March 23, 2008If you read Carl Feather’s“Reality Check” series over the past few weeks, you experienced a pretty good outline of our problems and even some solutions. Star Beacon If you read Carl Feather’s“Reality Check” series over the past few weeks, you experienced a pretty good outline of our problems and even some solutions. Yes, there is hope. In fact, we could mark the series as the point of return. We hit the bottom and at this point we start working our way back up. After all, Ashtabula County wasn’t always so depressed, it wasn’t always doom and gloom. We had the big manufacturing plants in Ashtabula County. Remember those along State Road in Ashtabula Township? I’ve been told you couldn’t find a parking place in downtown Conneaut in the 1950s on a Friday night because of all of the traffic with payday at the Nickel Plate Railroad. Feather’s series tells the human side of depression and recession. Ashtabula County has many problems. We have a less-educated workforce. We have the fallout of NAFTA. Our best and brightest don’t even consider staying in Ashtabula County once they get their college degrees. As a public service, the Star Beacon even publishes a list of those students who our leaving our area. You can find it once or twice a week under titles such as “College news” and “Dean’s list.” Yes, we have problems, but we also do precious little to solve those problems. And that is sad. We have people hurting, really hurting. Yet what are our public officials worried about? Well, Conneaut City Council spent a year with a doomed-to-failure rental inspection program. I’m not saying rental inspections are a bad idea. I’m saying no Conneaut council in the past 50 years has had the backbone to enact rental inspections. Even a lackluster, watered down version didn’t get the time of day. So why spend a year’s time on a plan that is doomed to failure when there are so many pressing matters? Even as doomed as the rental inspection program was, at least it was introduced as a way to make a positive difference. These days Conneaut council is obsessed with subjects like: When did City Manager Doug Lewis get angry with Burdick Plumbing and for how long? 
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