Page 28 - Joe Schember News Today

The city of Eries code enforcement officers will soon receive a $200,000 boost from state government. Kathy Wyrosdick, the citys director of planning and neighborhood resources, confirmed that the city of Eries application for a Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development grant – aimed at streamlining operations and improving efficiency for the city employees who track blighted properties and investigate code violations, among other tasks – has been approved.  The state ...

Image: Contributed photo January 12, 2021 ERIE, Pa. — Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, discussed social justice activism, including the Black Lives Matter movement, in an online forum that will open Penn State Behrend’s 2021 celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Jan. 18 program, which was hosted on Zoom, was free and open to the public. Martin, 17, was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Florida, in 2012. The man who killed him was a...

Image: Contributed photo January 19, 2021 “The death of a child –- that’s just a different type of loss. There’s no manual for that, no person you can call and ask what you should do next. “When Trayvon was killed, it felt like the end of my life, too, I pulled my car to the side of the expressway, and I yelled out to God. I asked, ‘Why? Why? Why did this happen?’ And there’s no good answer. “I try to connect myself with people who are positive, and who are trying t...

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, will discuss social justice activism, including the Black Lives Matter movement, in an online forum that will open Penn State Behrend’s 2021 celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. The Jan. 18 program, which will be hosted on Zoom, is free and open to the public.

The city of Erie could bring in financial help soon in relation to a large portion of the $96.7 million lump sum payment the city received in October.  Mayor Joe Schember’s administration and members of Erie City Council are talking about soliciting proposals from financial and investment managers “to give us a professional opinion on how to move forward” with the bulk of that money in terms of management strategies and potential investments, councilman David Brennan said.  Brennan sa...

The Erie Bureau of Police dealt with challenges throughout 2020. Some were new, like keeping a law enforcement agency running and continuing to serve the public as COVID-19 posed a threat to the officers and the people they encountered. Others were familiar, like a new spike in gun violence that approached levels not seen in the city in several years. One was unexpected, as a night of violence that erupted following a peaceful protest in the citys downtown in late May led to allegations of br...

Conversations about equality and racial justice.  Like the rest of the nation and world, Erie County was affected by all of those events in 2020, and they understandably wrested attention and energy away from the region’s renaissance movement. But that does not mean the momentum forged over the past few years — aimed at bringing improved leadership and transformational change to the region and created within Erie’s civic and political landscape — has disappeared. “In a normal year, ...

Susan Bithell was suffering from COVID-19. So was Corys father, David "Doc" Bithell. Cory Bithell had stopped by his parents house on Saturday, Nov. 21. He was dropping off lunch. He brought Greek burgers, from New York Lunch, the East Avenue fixture that long had been a favorite dining spot for his parents. They had been housebound for the past 10 days, ever since they had each come down with a fever as high as 102 degrees. Each had lost 20 pounds over that time, further jeopardizing ...

Susan Gormans latest trip to visit her son in Erie was a notable one, even without the water cannons. Gorman, an Erie native who now lives in Naples, Florida, was among a handful of passengers who flew into Erie International Airport late Thursday morning on the inaugural flight of a new United Airlines nonstop service between Erie and Washington, D.C. United Express Flight 3905, which was scheduled to land in Erie shortly after noon Thursday, touched down at the airport at 11:46 a.m. and taxie...

The $100 million plan for improvements to the Bayfront Parkway is now at the center of a federal lawsuit focused on environmental concerns.  The suit was filed electronically in U.S. District Court in Erie on Tuesday morning by lawyers representing the NAACP’s Erie branch and the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future.  PennDOT and the Federal Highway Administration are defendants in the lawsuit.  The lawsuit challenges FHA’s approval of PennDOT’s...