SitemapCity council will vote Wednesday on a contract to pay the Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. up to $60,000 this year to continue providing planning services.
The decision to vote next week came Wednesday during a council finance committee meeting in which some council members — particularly Councilwomen Annie Gillam, D-1st, and Janet Tarpley, D-6th — asked questions and criticized the development agency.
Gillam wanted to know why the city is retaining YNDC because doing so is “destroying” the city’s planning department.
T. Sharon Woodberry, the city’s director of community planning and economic development, explained that the city’s planning department has three people, and couldn’t handle this work as effectively as YNDC, which has more than 30 employees.
Gillam said that YNDC hasn’t involved homeowner groups in the city in the planning process.
“They feel totally neglected and slighted,” she said.
Gillam also said that work on the city’s East Side is a low priority.
“We have got to stop thinking a certain way and include everybody,” she said.
Tarpley added that because some council members have “relationships” with Ian Beniston, YNDC’s executive director “shouldn’t mean my ward [is] slighted.”
Beniston said each ward is treated equally.
The city paid about $150,000 to YNDC last year — with $25,000 going to the Youngstown State University Center for Urban and Regional Studies — for planning, which included a citywide development plan.
That contract expired Dec. 31. Beniston said he submitted a request in October and then in February for an extension while YNDC continued to do planning work for the city.
The decision last week by Tarpley and Gillam to pull the YNDC contract from council’s agenda led to criticism from Councilmen Mike Ray, D-4th, and Paul Drennen, D-5th, that the two councilwomen were holding up legislation.
Tarpley said she was “really offended” by the comments.
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