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:
“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Vanity is as advantageous to a government as pride is dangerous. To be convinced of this we need only represent, on the one hand, the numberless benefits which result from vanity, as industry, the arts, fashions, politeness, and taste; and on the other, the infinite evils which spring from the pride of certain nations, a laziness, poverty, a total neglect of everything.”
—Charles Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1755)