Johnstown, PA - The blight of a once great city E1

a soldier nurse I just wanted to take a minute and share with you something that's been going on in Johnstown for the last couple of weeks it's been getting press on TV but nobody else is really talking about it we've got someone in our community who has decided to take it upon themselves to set fire to abandoned buildings buildings that are blighted in our community and a couple of days ago someone was kind enough to set fire to a building just down the street from the church here matter of fact it's just right past this corner here and I wanted to go ahead and show it all to you and I think the reason behind this individual doing this kind of thing is because our City Council has failed in their ability to actually function as a City Council they do more in fighting and complaining they do more padding the pockets of their relatives and friends buy a useless sewer system upgrade than actually taking care of buildings that look like this and don't get me wrong our entire communities are covered in buildings that look like this and instead of the City Council actually doing what they should through proper zoning and maybe going after the individuals who abandoned houses like this and holding them responsible they just let the community look like this there are hundreds and hundreds of houses in our community that look like this that are abandoned and our city doesn't care you know it's interesting because cities like Flint and cities like Detroit get a lot of press because of their failed economic policies and failed abilities to take care of their community but most people forget about places like Johnstown where people lived people worked companies thrived but see in a place like Johnstown where where once had probably one of the largest steel manufacturers in the world but see when the steel companies decided that it would be cheaper to manufacture their steel overseas or sell off their companies to foreign investors and not allow other companies to come in because the union's had word with it well these are the kind of things that happen in our community let me show you another one right down the street here from from the church this one's been abandoned since before I got here and I have been here going on five years and people of the community have complained to the city about it and asked the question why has this not been torn down and the only answer they ever get is well it's on the list it's interesting because I can understand that list being really long because we have so many blighted properties in our community but really it doesn't take a genius or rock on the top of the head to figure out that our city government's more concerned about giving favors to friends than to take care of properties that look like this completely blighted as you can see the house is even leaning and no one in the community care seems to know what no leadership in the community seems to care about it it's interesting because they are tearing some buildings down but the buildings that they're tearing down are in places where they think people will come in to the city from so that as they come into the city it doesn't look so blighted I think that's somewhat ridiculous where they're more concerned about what the city looks like the people who don't live here than they are about the people who live and work and live their lives here I think that's pretty sad what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to make it a point to produce videos from here on out that talks about the blight of our community and the complete lack of respect and the complete lack of accountability and the complete lack of leadership of the Johnstown City Council and the mayor my hope is at some point maybe just maybe they'll get it and something will be done and instead of pursuing useless construction ventures that actually create a more undue burden on the community like a sewer project that perhaps maybe they'll even think about what the community looks like and how the community should be served by them and not the community serving them so stay tuned thanks for watching god bless you have a wonderful day

Channel: The Wandering Parson

Views: 5,235

Rating: 4.915493 out of 5

Keywords: johnstown, blight, corruption

Id: 9-TEIZhNIe8

Length: 6min 21sec (381 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2019