After winning four national titles as head coach of the Youngstown State Penguins, current YSU President Jim Tressel left the Mahoning Valley for 14 years, winning an NCAA national football championship at The Ohio State University and then serving as a vice-president at Akron University.
      He returned to the Valley earlier this year to become the ninth president in the history of YSU, and last Friday he was the featured speaker at a Good Morning Boardman breakfast held at the Community Center in Boardman Park. About 200 persons attended the event.
      “It is great to be back in the Mahoning Valley,” Tressel observed, noting “What has been done here in the last 14 years is extraordinary.”
      Sponsors of the event, First National Bank, ms consultants and the Regional Chamber, asked Tressel to speak about leadership, a word the YSU president said “is a misunderstood word.”
      Tressel opined that leadership “is not in your title or your rank.
      “Leadership is the actions an individual takes to serve the greater good...Regions that are successful is where everyone rises.”
      He said “At YSU, it is what we can do to serve the region...so everyone rises.”
      Noting that student debt in the United States approaches $1.2 trillion, Tressel said concerns over that debt ‘keeps him up at night.’
      “We have to work extremely hard to make sure kids leave college with as little debt as possible so that when they graduate, they don’t have that anchor.”
      Also addressing the meeting were Thomas Costello, chair of Boardman Trustees; Tim Saxton, director of operations of the Boardman Local School District; and Dan Slagle, executive director of Boardman Park.
      Township
      Costello provided brief highlights of township government, noting “We have a team effort. Without that team effort of the some 150 township employees, the good things that are happening in Boardman Township, would not happen,” Costello said.
      He cited efforts by the Zoning Department to stabilize neighborhoods, including 18 homes that have been demolished and development of a new landlord registration program, “to help insure rental properties are maintained.”
      A road resurfacing program that includes purchase of asphalt with Canfield and Austintown has allowed Boardman to resurface 14 miles of roadway in two years.
      Costello also recognized new Fire Chief Mark Pitzer, and cited the completion of a $1.4 million communications system at the Boardman Police Department.
      Completion of the project was done without using taxpayer funds, Costello said, noting assets seized during drug raids, ‘from the bad guys’ paid for Boardman’s $700,000 share of the cost of the new system.
      In addition, the new communication system also allowed the police department to give emergency communication radios to the Southern Park Mall, Boardman Park and local schools.
      “These radios will allow us to have immediate and direct communication with those agencies during an emergency,” Costello said.
      Public Schools
      Saxton highlighted the effort to build a new stadium at Boardman High School, saying one had been planned when the high school was built in 1969. He said artificial turf has been installed at the site of the stadium and a ‘phase two’ of the project will be the construction of bleachers. Phase three would complete the stadium project, sometime in 2016, Saxton said.
      The stadium project includes a $1.7 million fund-raising drive that to date is woefully short of its goal, with the first game set at the new site for the fall for 2015.
      “We need the help of Boardman business,” Saxton said.
      He also touted Boardman High School’s Yes Fest program that was developed last year following the drug-related deaths of three former students ‘that shook the school system.’
      Saxton said the Yes Fest provides students positive options.
      Boardman Park
      Slagle began his career at Boardman Park in 1972 and during his lengthy tenure directing the park, its operations have flourished to the point where more than 400,000 people a year visit the 227-acre site.
      Slagle noted there is a proposed bikeway from the park to Boardman High School, and expressed hope that ‘someday’ there would be a bikeway along the Youngstown and Southern Railroad that stretches north to south along a five mile stretch in the township.