While the letters to the editor continue to come into The Daily Herald offices, another local source to offer viewpoints has become very busy lately. Tyrone’s own web site www.tyronepa.com offers residents both locally and around the world to get updates of local news, sports and more about their hometown. The website started a year ago by Open Door Visions, a local company located on Tenth Street in downtown Tyrone.
The site recently has seen a lot of public input on what is called its discussion boards located in the e-cafe zone of the website. The two issues that have generated a series of posts are the cancellation of dances at the Citizen’s Fire Department social hall and the handling of punishments at the Tyrone Area School District.
The messages left by residents concerning the dance issue have featured both teenagers and adults and basically support the dances to continue.
One post from an eighteen year old asked, “What is there for kids to actually do in Tyrone?” while another says that youth dances have been going on in Tyrone for as long as anyone can remember. The dances at the social hall were recently stopped due to problems involving underage drinking, fights and more problems. Tyrone Borough council issued a letter to the department a week ago stating that the dances must stop or the department will lose its local funding.. Several board members of the department resigned over the dance and other financial issues later in the week.
Rick Gority, one of the partners in Open Door Visions has certainly seen an increase in local posts on the discussion boards recently.
He told The Daily Herald this morning, “It started with some e-mail letters sent to us after students read the newspaper articles on the web site. We posted the letters and things grew from there.”
The other local issue generating even more interest is a a post concerning a Daily Herald story back on April 22, 2003. It refers to an incident involving a 18 year old Tyrone student and his punishment in a incident at school. This string of posts is even larger with over fourteen people responding and even more local residents just reading the information but not offering any opinions. Open Door Visions offers on-site information on the amount of readers that view the different postings.
Gority has been impressed with the different demographics of people that have been not only viewing the site but also adding to it in the public discussion forums. He hopes that it continues to grow and becomes a place where all issues can be discussed in an open format.
“We’ve had adults and kids come to the site. We’ve had posts from kids from nine to eighteen. That is what the site was designed for,” said Gority.
So if you’re concerned about this community or you want to just check in and see what is going on in town, we invite you to view daily the information and Daily Herald news provided on one of the finest web sites for a community of this size.
