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Stadium renovation right call

Shining rays of sun on some good news: The Penn State Board of Trustees is moving forward on a major renovation to Beaver Stadium. For the past several years, the university has been wrestling with whether to build a new stadium or modernize its current 106,592-seat home. PSU confirmed its intentions following last week’s Board of Trustees meeting, and we think it is making the right call. Plans are still being finalized and will be presented to the board for a vote in the “near future,” PSU said. The football program is a major source of price to this region and ...

Roaring Spring dialogue needs to continue

As Roaring Spring continues moving past its paper-making history, mixed emotions nonetheless will remain firmly entrenched in the community — indefinitely. On the one hand, there will be cautious optimism about what a proposed recreational complex on the former Appvion paper mill site will mean eventually for the borough’s future. On the other, residents and others living nearby will continue to lament the jobs and $38 million in annual payroll lost when the mill was shuttered in early 2021. Now, with razing of the plant having begun, a new sense of finality must be acknowledged, ...

Additional financial info needed

The Southern Alleghenies region is perceived to be faring reasonably well despite the inflationary pressures and other economic challenges consumers and borrowers from coast to coast in this country have been facing daily for much of the past year. However, “perceived to be faring” can be quite different from how consumers/borrowers actually are faring. Thus, it would be helpful for more information to emerge for people here to better understand how this region stacks up against other places. This region’s banks possess a wealth of data capable of unveiling much of the true ...

Derailment underscores train danger

The Feb. 3 fiery freight train derailment at East Palestine, Ohio, involving dozens of cars, including tankers carrying hazardous materials, has understandably caused great anxiety in many people living near railroad tracks, including some here in Pennsylvania. All considered, that reaction is understandable. The scope of current anxiety in and around East Palestine in the derailment’s aftermath was captured in a quote included in an Associated Press article published in the Mirror’s Feb. 10 edition. East Palestine area resident Brittany Dailey told reporters, “I’m scared ...

Open your heart today, every day

(Editor’s note: The following editorial was written by former Mirror Staff Writer Amanda Gabeletto in 2013. We liked it so much, we’ve run it annually since.) Love covers a lot of ground. There is the love between a parent and a child. There’s love for one’s partner, sibling, friend, pet. There is even the very real love a child feels for a favorite stuffed animal. Any parent who has had to wash that stuffed animal or search frantically for it can attest to that. Some might say love varies in its degrees — that the love one has for a spouse cannot compare to the love ...

Shortage of mental-health staff alarming

The federal Health Resources and Services Administration says about 158.4 million Americans currently live in areas with shortages of mental-health workers, while a decade ago a “mere” 94.8 million people resided in such areas. According to that federal agency, the number of mental-health professionals needed to address the scarcity in question grew to 7,957 in 2022, up from 2,593 in 2013. Public-health officials and advocacy groups are pressing the message that the shortage results from both increased demand for services and a lack of mental-health professionals caused in part ...