Friday, January 09, 2015YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Mahoning County has put good people on the Western Reserve Port Authority’s board of directors in the past but not given them direction, Commissioner David Ditzler said.
That was a condition the board of commissioners sought to correct during a meeting Thursday with three of its four appointees to the WRPA board: Martin Loney, David Mosure and one of the two newest members, John Boccieri. John Moliterno, WRPA interim executive director, and its economic development manager, Sarah Lown, also attended the session.
Rich Edwards, who along with Boccieri was appointed to the WRPA board by Mahoning County at the end of 2014, participated by phone.
Also joining the meeting with County Commissioners Ditzler, Carol Rimedio-Righetti and Anthony Traficanti were Prosecutor Paul Gains and members of his staff, and Audrey Tillis, county budget director.
The port authority was formed 20 years ago to oversee operations at what is now the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna Township. In recent years, it expanded its role in economic development, capitalizing on financing tools available to it.
“We put people on the board that we think add value,” Ditzler said. “We don’t want to give you marching orders, so to speak. We just want to give you our philosophy so you understand where we’re coming from.” The county, he pointed out, “puts forth quite a bit of money” from revenues generated by the county bed tax.
When the county increased the bed tax to provide additional funds to the port authority, the purpose was to spur economic development, Ditzler added. “We wanted as a board to make sure that our board members knew that that was a primary concern from Mahoning County’s standpoint.”
One of the seven port authority members who joined the board last year, David Mosure, congratulated commissioners for the course they are taking. Mahoning and Trumbull counties each appoint four members to the WRPA board.
“It’s unbelievable how you stepped up and knew something had to be changed,” Mosure said. “We’re here to make things happen for the better.”
“We do have some challenges” and “some mountains to climb,” Boccieri acknowledged, but expressed optimism that those challenges could be overcome.
Boccieri and Edwards bring much to the board, according to Ditzler. In addition to both being pilots, Boccieri is a former state senator and U.S. congressman and Edwards is a business owner and former Austintown trustee.
“While I’m representative of what the Mahoning County commissioners have in their vision, with respect to where they would like to see the board and port authority go, we have to work together collectively as a region,” Boccieri remarked. The two counties share “similar interests so we’ve all got to bring our interests together to work toward the end, which is making sure that we have viable transportation modes within and out of the Valley.”
Boccieri is commander of the 757th Airlift Squadron at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station and soon will take a position with a commercial airline. YARS is the third-largest employer in the Mahoning Valley, with nearly 3,000 full- and part-time employees, he noted. “It’s significant in terms of being able to have an airport and an infrastructure that supports military operations there,” he said.
Boccieri said he was interested in joining the port authority board because of political and aviation backgrounds. While in Congress, he served as chairman of the aviation subcommittee and said he hopes to lend his experience with the “political landscape” to the port authority board.
WRPA members, commissioners and other county officials also heard from Moliterno and Lown.
The port authority’s economic development arm is working with 12 companies and has four under agreements, which is “four times more” than a year ago, Lown said. Two of the projects, both in downtown Youngstown, could be ready for the port authority to take action on at its scheduled Jan. 21 meeting.
“They’re both residential hospitality-oriented projects and it’s part of a broader development of the central business district of Youngstown,” Lown explained, declining to be more specific. Many people don’t realize that the highest concentration of employment and business activity in the region is in downtown Youngstown, she continued.
“We’re doing a couple of projects that we think will help spur new development, new jobs, a lot more activity,” she said. “What you want to do is take those areas where you’re strong and build on that, and that’s what we’ve got going.”
Moliterno reported that passenger activity at the airport last year totaled 129,212, up 36% over last year, and the airport has set a target of 150,000 passengers for this year.
“Is it where we want to be? No. But it’s headed in the right direction,” he said.
Moliterno also spoke to the port authority’s economic development function. “Our job is to cooperate with every other economic development agency in the two counties to try to bring jobs to the Valley,” he said.
He also pledged to make sure that county officials receive all the information that port authority board members receive.
“In the past there was too much that wasn’t transparent,” Ditzler said. “Our board of commissioners is very much focused on making sure there’s transparency in what’s going on.”
Pictured: John Boccieri, commander of the 757th Airlift Squadron at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station, is one of the newest members of the Western Reserve Port Authority.
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