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Opinion

There’s plenty of progress to report

Editorials

When you open Wednesday’s edition and look through the pages of the first installment of this year’s Progress Edition, you’ll find comments that say a lot about the direction the Tri-State Area is headed in. Jefferson County Commissioner Jake Kleineke, for one, is excited about the opportunities for growth that are being seen around the region. “I feel like we’re making steps in the right direction,” he explained while discussing development, adding that when one community scores a development hit, it creates a ripple effect that is felt across the region. That ...

Spring training offers a sure sign

Editorials

Are you tired of the cold and snow? Have you had it with experiencing, day-after-day, weather forecasts that call for overnight temperatures that start close to zero and afternoon temperatures that are consistently below freezing? Have you resorted to cursing the groundhog and started to wonder out loud how the woolly bear caterpillars you so carefully studied last fall could have been so wrong? Relax — spring is on the way. And while we haven’t seen the grass in a couple of weeks and the trees are still waiting for their first buds, we would remind you that there’s an ...

Guest column/Fixing Hancock Schools a marathon, not a sprint

Local Columns

By now nearly everyone has most likely seen the dire financial situation that the Hancock County school system finds itself in. Years of inadequate personnel management, overspending and a lack of thorough financial oversight finally caught up with them when it was recently announced that the school system is facing a budget shortfall of approximately $8 million. All of this occurred during the stretch of multiple superintendents and numerous county board members, and was finally brought to light this past fall when then-Superintendent Dan Enich notified the West Virginia ...

Animal cruelty on display

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: Weirton has several colonies of community cats — cats that live outdoors, have been neutered or spayed and are cared for by volunteers or store employees. Some of these colonies have been in the same places for a decade or more. Recently, during the cold snaps, someone who apparently likes to cause suffering to animals collected all of the bins and boxes that the cats live in by Gabe’s and the downtown car wash and threw them away, even though those bins and boxes were not their property. Worse yet, this person left the cats to die in freezing weather. One cat ...

Anger without answers

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: Barry Bardone is at it again, offering another letter built on dishonest claims and exaggerated rhetoric rather than facts or good-faith argument (“Time to stop the insanity,” Feb. 1.) Bardone’s letter follows a familiar formula: Substitute outrage for evidence, smear an entire political party and declare victory. It reads less like a serious contribution to public debate and more like a greatest-hits compilation of talk-radio grievances, strung together without sourcing, context or concern for accuracy. Passion is not a substitute for proof. Contrary to his ...

Guest column/Life on the region’s frontier could often be difficult

Local Columns

It’s going to snow — a lot … Our ancestors did not have the advantage of modern weather warning systems to prepare for things like bitter, raw, sub-zero temperatures, blizzards and ice storms. The Upper Ohio Valley was settled during some of the coldest winters of the Little Ice Age. The wintry weather that could be remembered might have been blended from the stories told in front of a hearth with a roaring fire and a black bake kettle and a bean pot, from a forebear of my mother’s side of the family. It was a time when youngsters were put to sleep in their feather beds to ...