Government
Youngstown is governed by a mayor who is elected every four years and limited to a maximum of two terms. Mayors are traditionally inaugurated on or around January 2. The city has tended to elect Democratic mayors since the late 1920s because of the local unions' support for Democratic candidates for office. Youngstown's current mayor is Charles Sammarone, who replaced Jay Williams, the city's first African-American mayor and its first independent mayor since 1922. Williams belonged to the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, a bi-partisan group with the stated goal of "making the public safer by getting illegal guns off the streets". He left his position in Youngstown to become President Barack Obama's auto czar, directing the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry.
Residents elect an eight-member city council composed of representatives of the city's seven wards and a council president. The council, in turn, appoints a city clerk. The council traditionally meets every first and third Wednesday of the month. City council meetings are generally held from the third week in September to the third week in June. Meanwhile, the board of control oversees contracts for public projects within the municipal limits. The Youngstown Police Department and Youngstown Fire Department fall under the board's supervision, as do the parks, civil service, community development, health, planning, and water departments.
Youngstown's finance department oversees all municipal finances and supervises the departments of economic development and income tax. The city's department of public works has sweeping supervisory responsibilities and oversees the departments of engineering, building inspection, building and grounds, signal and sign, demolition and housing, litter and recycling, street, and water waste treatment. The city's law department represents the city on all legal issues, serving as counsel to all municipal departments.
Read more about this topic: Youngstown Metropolitan Area
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“I thought it a pity that some poor student did not live there, to profit by all that light, since he would not rob the mariner.... Think of fifteen Argand lamps to read the newspaper by! Government oil!—light enough, perchance, to read the Constitution by! I thought that he should read nothing less than his Bible by that lamp.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Government is able to afford a suitable army and a suitable navy. It may maintain them without the slightest danger to the Republic or the cause of free institutions, and fear of additional taxation ought not to change a proper policy in this regard.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.”
—John Caldwell Calhoun (1782–1850)