Scranton is in Growth Mode (Plum, Sharon: crimes, landscaping, neighborhoods)

[NYRangers 2008]

Originally Posted by weluvpa

I guess I'm not as excited as you guys are about the city and area being overrun by people from NY and NJ......I still don't think that it will the economic windfall for the region that you might and I strongly feel that it will in the end take away from the city and its heritage and replace it with a cookie cutter NJ..NY suburbanite crap that the poconos are dealing with and have become.

Maybe we should rename the city Scranton Country Place..SCP because its already heading in that direction and this train will undoubtly seal the deal and ruin this city.

I don't want to live in suburban NJ, NY city that is fed by a train, if I did I would be living in Madison or Morristown NJ....

We are not building an economic base for business here if all we will do is export our workforce to NJ and NY by train. More time should be spent on trying to figure out how to make our region/city more attractive to companies so that the people living here can have jobs HERE and support their families. Not trying to figure out how to get our people out to other states to work.

They get our workers and we get their trash in more ways then one.

Just maybe and I mean maybe if our mayor would take his head out of his political contributors arse's he would see that if he just lowered the business privilege, mercantile and wage taxes that we would a very attractive city for companies to open in. What do they do instead, they offer corporate welfare in the form of KOZ's and they are sucked up by local businessmen that have and will continue to do nothing of any true value with them other then saving money and lining their pockets.

True economic change will come once we have people that actually care about the city and its people in charge.

I couldn't have said it better myself Dan. I love visiting NY, but I don't need a train to do it. I'm happy just driving in myself every once in awhile. This will not help turn Scranton around. Like you said and others have said countless times, get rid of the oppressive taxes and KOZ's and then maybe Scranton has a shot of turning the corner. Don't worry about connecting Scranton to NY via railway, worry about the problems here first.

[GreenRidgeGuy]

Originally Posted by ScranBarre

The University of Scranton's faculty largely lives in that sprawling mess we call South Abington Township as well, even though, to their credit, a few have settled in Dunmore.
:

Paul, I would argue that there are more U faculty/ staff living in areas of Scranton (close to 2 dozen that I know in the hill section alone) than in South Abington.

[PITTSTON2SARASOTA]

I realize the general pessimisim of area residents is partly justified; I lived there for 30 years....but the grass ain't always greener.....on that other side. Seriously Scranton has superb historic architecture as I have attempted to point out(to no avail) before, you need to market the good amenities and try to improve the bad. We want to move out of this God-forsaken state and seriously consedered downtown Scranton(or Wilkes-Barre) as a destination; but the negativity really is a turn-off....nothing seems to have changed as far as perceptions and attitudes are concerned. If you hate (on a message board) your city people will be turned off...a good slogan for Scranton may be in order to lure back residents who have moved away...there are plenty of us as evidenced by participants on the board. And to Paul; happy you are dating...good luck...sounds promising.

[The Commish]

Although this will rankle a lot of people, I think Scranton should advertise to Latinos and other recent Hispanic immigrants about its growing Hispanic community in South Side. I'm thinking Spanish-language advertisements in NYC, border states, Univision, radio, etc. We know that Hispanic immigration is the driving force behind demographic changes and population growth in this country, so Scranton should get a piece of that pie (or a piece of that quesadilla). I think in fact that that's our only chance to grow our population again. Otherwise we risk eventually becoming like other cities unable to keep up with their infrastructure like Flint, Detroit, etc.

[weluvpa]

As long as they don't move into your neighborhood right? Your nuts, the latino community in Scranton i.e. southside is a mess and to encourage more of that mess to spread thru out the city is absolutly nuts.....

I think its a novel idea coming from a someone that doesn't live in the city......Where was it, Glenmaura?

[The Commish]

Originally Posted by weluvpa

As long as they don't move into your neighborhood right? Your nuts, the latino community in Scranton i.e. southside is a mess and to encourage more of that mess to spread thru out the city is absolutly nuts.....

I think its a novel idea coming from a someone that doesn't live in the city......Where was it, Glenmaura?

You're going to have to do a better job articulating what "mess" means and why what you consider a "mess" is less preferable than our region's dying alternative. Any concentrated area of recent immigration will be necessarily lower-income as recent immigrants tend to work the lowest-skilled jobs. This trend changes in subsequent generations (typically the 3rd and 4th) as the offspring of immigrants fully assimilate into society and achieve higher levels of education and work higher-paying jobs.

The fact is that Scranton is *not* a city that attracts high-paying business and professional jobs. We are a blue-collar city at its core, the remnants of a coal-mining and industrial town. Demographic trends leave us with an ever-aging workforce and a declining population. At some point, we're going to have a problem of having inadequate tax revenues to maintain basic services for the population, just like in Flint, Akron, Detroit, etc. We'll start to see abandoned homes on every block and razed lots soon thereafter.

Advertising to Hispanic immigrants could be the answer. It could solve our population problem, lower the average age of our citizens, and provide a vibrant new chapter in our city's long history of providing a home for diverse ethnic groups (Irish, Italian, Polish, etc). Recent immigrants tend to be extremely hard-working and entrepreneurial. And immigrants generally are involved *less* in crime than citizens. These are all empirical, testable facts, not puffery. The Scranton Chamber of Commerce should be all over this.

As far as not living in the city is concerned, I tend to think that's a red herring line of criticism. You should attack ideas, not the qualifications of the people expressing them. After all, I don't exclude your opinion because you can't spell or consistently string together complete sentences. But if you must know, in college I did extensive economic field-research for a professor on the growing Hispanic community in South Side. I've participated in conferences and presented research at these conferences on this very subject. I'm also well-versed in immigration law and in the attendant social and political issues surrounding immigration. So, in a phrase, "Bring it."

[ScranBarre]

Originally Posted by GreenRidgeGuy

Paul, I would argue that there are more U faculty/ staff living in areas of Scranton (close to 2 dozen that I know in the hill section alone) than in South Abington.

This is a reply to an old post of mine, but I can still recall doing an Excel spreadsheet cross-referencing all of the faculty members listed on the university's web site with the Lackawanna County online assessment database to find out where they all lived and to see if any of them were truly "committed" to the campus community or if they were all "Scranton quitters." The results didn't make me happy.

I left my spreadsheet on the hard drive of my other PC, but if you'd like I'd be more than happy to do that research again tonight and post it on here. Before anyone squawks there is no "invasion of privacy" because the faculty listing of the university and their home addresses are a matter of public record. I've ALWAYS had a sour taste in my mouth for South Abington Township because all it does is "leech" vitality out of the Electric City by fleecing it of its middle-and-upper-middle-class tax base more and more on an annual basis. I think South Abington Township is now somewhere around the third-most-populous commmunity in Lackawanna County actually, just eclipsing Carbonale (and still comfortably behind Dunmore). It's all just sprawl though---nothing to write home about.

Scranton gives back to the entire region with its universities, hospitals, museums, major parks, small yet recognizable skyline, festivals, "The Office", etc. What does South Abington Township do to "give back" to NEPA?

[weluvpa]

Commish how many latinos live in your community?

Mess = Robberies, shootings, crime in general, gang activity.....festivals with booze and burn outs that end in the police shutting it down, and everything else that happens in that section of town. Southside is a mess and its starting to migrate into westside now as well. Why not just bus them from NJ and NY and give them the homes that are up for sale by those fleeing the MESS in Scranton. The Mess you don't deal with because you don't live here.

Again where you live directly affects what you say we need for our city, especially when you live in a sheltered community that only sees minorities doing yard work and you have yet to pay one red cent in property taxes.

[The Commish]

Originally Posted by weluvpa

Mess = Robberies, shootings, crime in general, gang activity.....festivals with booze and burn outs that end in the police shutting it down, and everything else that happens in that section of town. Southside is a mess and its starting to migrate into westside now as well. Why not just bus them from NJ and NY and give them the homes that are up for sale by those fleeing the MESS in Scranton.

The crux of the matter is that you're trying to tie increased crime and violence to Hispanic immigration when that generally isn't true. It wasn't true for Hazelton, it's not true nationally (see above linked report), and I'd be hard-pressed to believe it's true for Scranton. (Notice I'm not attacking your generally immigration-hostile conservative and libertarian mindset as skewing your perspective. That may or may not be true, but it shouldn't be the subject of discussion).

Originally Posted by weluvpa

Commish how many latinos live in your community?

The Mess you don't deal with because you don't live here.

Again where you live directly affects what you say we need for our city, especially when you live in a sheltered community that only sees minorities doing yard work and you have yet to pay one red cent in property taxes.

You would much rather make this a debate about each other rather than about the issues. I am not willing to humor you on that front any further than I already have. I'm only willing to discuss the legitimacy of viewpoints themselves, not the people who express those viewpoints. If you aren't up to a discussion on that level, then that's understandable.

[scrantonluna]

Dan is right, crime in South Side is certainly on the rise.

On the other hand, there is also a point to be made for
mass immigration, as it can have positive effects if
handled in the right way.

The city really needs to look into targeted law and code
enforcement in SS, but also programs geared towards
helping spanish speaking residents meld into the local
society. I'm talking about things as simple as '"you
don't throw your trash in the street" type stuff.

Granted a certain amount of any population has no
desire to assimilate or be respectful of others, but I
have to figure that this is the minority of immigrants,
just like any other culture.

If there is a golden opportunity, we haven't yet found
it in SS. Not to say it's not there, but you have to
encourage and cultivate those things.