Move here? Do yourself a favor. Don't do it.

So the mayor wants people to move to Scranton? Let me tell you about my experiences moving here.

I lived in a city where crime and gangs were prevelant. After answering a radio ad and going through a selection process, classes on homeownership and interviews, I moved into one of the worst sections of town because I was able to buy a condemned house for a dollar, with the help of that city. I got a mortgage with the help of that city to renovate that house with the understanding that I was there to help turn things around. The city officials were incredible, assisiting us at every turn, making the renovations we did about as close to painless as possible. They even offered technical advice on how to go about making renovations and were a phone call away when needed.


My wife, families and I worked our tails off to make the house a home. I was active in the neighborhood association/crime watch and we made a difference. Not a huge one but we cleared the drug dealers from the block, worked with the neighborhood police to solve crimes and make life better for the low-moderate income area. When we left, it was because, although better, our neighborhood was still a tough place to raise kids and the schools in the area were not good.


I was born and raised in Scranton and I liked the direction the city was going in. We moved here in late 2001, when the city was in the midst of the election frenzy. I wanted the safe schools, safe streets and all the other things Scranton had going for it. I should have been more perceptive. Trying to get a simple building permit in this city is like pulling teeth from an eight-year-old. Help is non-existant, for the most part and there's an attitude that whatever is done for you is akin to a hugh Christmas present, rather than the assistance the office should provide. It shouldn't be that way for a city fighting a fleeing population. We were offered no financial assistance and constantly made to feel like we were breaking the law when we wanted to do work on our home that we were quite qualified to do. Every call was met with "You'll have to talk to.... and they're out of the office and I don't know when they will return..." As of a couple of weeks ago, it's still the same.


A few months here and I find out the new mayor is cutting police protection, wants to close fire stations and all the other crap that's going on. I've spoken at council and watched council members read their mail, clean their nails and just about everything else while people talk. Why? We, the people don't matter here and they already know how they're going to vote. I've been here five years now and I'm sorry we moved here.


My taxes are skyrocketing. I see the crime increasing and, with my experiences out of town and my professional experience, I can say with some authority that the moves by this mayor to curtail the police and fire protection have led to and will lead to more problems, not less.


This administration cites and evicts homeowners for violations while giving businesses truckloads of money and incentives to develop minimum and near-minimum wage jobs. The administration spends thousands of dollars on promoting the mayor. How many low-income people could have been helped with repairs to their homes with just the money spent to plaster the TeamDoh! leader's puss over those billboards last year? The administration offers services to cronies while ignoring those who don't pay to play.


Right now, I don't want new people to come to this area. We need to make a lot of corrections before we ask new people to live here. We need to revamp the licensing and inspections office and make it so that people can build and remodel in this city without feeling like they are a burden, because, surprisingly, the people are the reason that office exists.


We need to spend more on the neighborhoods and less on the downtown because that's the real reason people come here to live. We need to get our municipal spending under control so we don't tax people to death. We need to straighten out the contract morass with the fire and police so we are assured these people have what they need to do their jobs and that we don't lose the best and brightest to other departments.


We need department heads who work together. The debacle with the stuck fire truck, for example, should never have happened because the DPW director, who should be a community member who could anticipate the needs of other departments, let all of us down by not cooperating with the other departments. It's winter. A DPW truck should be on call whenever the temperature is below freezing. For that matter, one should always be on-call for emergencies.


We're past the time when passing the buck was acceptable and the administration needed to be accountable only to the mayor. We pay more and more and it's time we get value for our money.


We need to make this a community driven by the community, not businesses and cronies. Until we get our boat in order, would you want your brother or sister to move here? I know I wouldn't reccomend moving here and I love this town. I moved here. I can speak to this issue. Our government makes it hard to move here, hard to live here and I, for one, wouldn't ask anyone else to do so until we make a lot of changes.


We are a bedroom community. The days of thousand-job plants are gone. We will be the city that supplies the labor to other areas for other types of jobs that will pay well. We need to embrace that ideal. Our city will thrive when businesses are allowed to develop to meet the demands of a growing population, not force-planted and supported by tax dollars. We've tried the other way and it doesn't work. How many times do you do the wrong thing before you step back and say, "Let's do this right?"


If you want people to live in your neighborhoods, stop wasting time and money on the center city. Make the neighborhoods a place to live and businesses will flock to take care of those people. Not only do we have this backwards at current, we flaunt it and throw successful businesses out on the street to prove it.


If we want more people to live here, we need to demand change and ignoring the problems won't make them go away. This site is not here to protect a failed administration, it's here to promote what this city could be.


TeamDoh! divides us because that's how they hold a tenuous grip on the government. United we grow, divided we fall and, for those of you unfamiliar with the term, we are now in free-fall and the mayor handed out the parachutes to the likes of Southern Union and the owners of the Ice Box.


The rest of us taxpayers? We got backpacks with an anvil made of tax bills inside and an assurance they were parachutes. Although I speak for my experiences only, I've spoken to others with similar stories and I offer this commentary to save the next person from the aggravation I've dealt with.