"Tonight I want to show you that mayors just want to have fun like everyone else," said Youngstown mayor Jamael 'Tito' Brown. 

He opened his first full State of the City address since 2019 with a bit of levity.
Brown then took the time to thank department heads, as well as city, county and regional partners.

The mayor used those partnerships to pivot to the issues facing the city, and the solutions to overcoming them.

"We're hoping we can partner with them and help give us more resources for our mothers as it relates to infant mortality," he told the crowd of a few hundred at DeYor Performing Arts Center Thursday night.

A new senior center will call the city home, along with a social hub that started as a mobile market.

"We're moving to those things and then we say 'what's next, how do we do that?', with (things like) infant mortality, and we're trying to take care of our babies and our (baby) boomers, that's going to be our focus," Brown said.

That focus also includes what the mayor called the pains of growth - with lots of downtown construction - but headway being made there as well.
For a city facing complex problems like crime and food deserts, Mayor Brown boiled the solution down to the simple concept of working together.

He closed his remarks channeling the words of former president Barack Obama.

"The answer to the cynics who tell us our house must be divided, that we cannot come together, that we cannot remake this community...I say 'yes we can'."