About 20 Westmoreland County residents came together in Jeannette on Wednesday night to discuss the challenges, strengths and future of the region as part of a "regional visioning initiative."

The initiative is called the Power of 32, a project that assembles 32 counties from Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Maryland for a "regional visioning effort to see if there are commonalities that can help us to frame our future," said Alex Graziani, coordinator of the project in Westmoreland County. The region, also known as "Steeler Nation" by the initiative’s Power Point video, embraces about 4.3 million people, 362,200 of them in Westmoreland County.

Among the concerns of last night’s participants were jobs, economic development, industrial blight and education.

Albert Stanislaw of Jeannette said he was concerned that local politicians were not being held accountable for what they do with "our money," because nobody bothers to tell them.

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