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Re-entry group faces hard work

The one indisputable reality encompassing the work of the Blair County Prison Re-entry Coalition is that its efforts will continue to necessitate utmost patience and understanding. Absent one or both of those two assets, the coalition will be doomed to failure and, ultimately, extinction. All of that became clear from reading articles in the Mirror’s Feb. 8-9 and Feb. 10 editions. What also became clear from reading those articles was that the coalition is — and will continue to be — dependent upon support from the community in general and certain important entities within ...

Editorials in this space in recent weeks focused on cancer’s link to alcohol and that doctors and researchers currently are studying gut health in their probe of cancer’s causes. “There’s no question we’re missing something” was the comment of a California gastrointestinal oncologist quoted in the Mirror’s Jan. 25-26 edition under the headline “Doctors eye gut health as part of cancer probe.” The doctor was lamenting about the cancer mystery of why cancer rates have fallen for older adults in recent years, but gastrointestinal cancers, across the globe, are ...

Review board instrumental in blight fight

Altoona should not ignore any potential resource in the fight against blight. That’s why the city should revive the Vacant Property Review Board, which has been dormant since about 2008. Evidence in the form of blight — now and perhaps as far back as 2008 — has shown how inactivity of the review board can affect this municipality’s work to reduce the number of problem properties. Relegating the review board to an entity of inactivity probably should have been avoided and, hopefully, that will change in the near future. As part of acknowledging updated thinking about the ...

NS should look to future safety issues

The $22 million settlement resolving all of East Palestine, Ohio’s, claims against Norfolk Southern Railroad represents a significant step toward finally putting the disastrous February 2023 derailment there to rest. But unfortunately for the railroad, whose service territory includes Altoona and Johnstown, there are a number of other money headaches remaining that will continue the throbbing inside the company’s financial “cranium.” It’s an unenviable future that awaits N.S., and it seems much too early to predict how and when those predictably burdensome obligations will ...

McCrory’s project should be praised

People look down on those who brag for the purpose of touting their self-perceived greatness or, worse, for ridiculing or belittling others. But, what can be referred to as “controlled bragging” should not be construed as bad in all cases. It can have a positive, useful purpose, if its intent is built genuinely around helping others. Downtown Altoona’s former McCrory’s 5 & 10 building at 1306 11th Ave. is a great example of the latter. Other communities should take notice and heed an opportunity that should become reality, if local leaders, as they ought to do, make that ...

PSU should be transparent in budget woes

Imagine what people of Johnstown would be thinking and feeling if the University of Pittsburgh were to arouse speculation that some of its branch campuses might be targeted for possible closing — and If the university were remaining tight-lipped about which campuses were in danger of being shuttered. It is reasonable to believe that community and businesses leaders would be mobilizing to meet with university leaders to try to ascertain as much information as possible about what was being considered. In addition, those community and business leaders certainly would be planning to ...