‘Voices of the Valley’ attracting attention

It’s operated by Chad Licht, a 2024 EFHS graduate and a former school board candidate.

Elizabeth Forward area resident and former school board candidate Chad Licht is hoping he can provide another avenue to help keep residents informed.

Licht, a 2024 Elizabeth Forward High School graduate and a student at Community College of Allegheny County studying social (political) sciences, recently launched his “Voices of the Valley” website. It’s a Substack publication covering current events in the Mon Valley, with a special focus on the Elizabeth Forward community.

Through this platform, Licht hopes to build on the connections made during the election by keeping his community informed about the issues that matter most.

“My number one thing is that I felt like there was not a lot of information coming out from the board,” Licht said. “So my thing was if I got on (the board), I wanted to fix that.”

When he fell short in his campaign, he was still thinking of ways to stay involved.

Licht also wanted to create a space where elected officials and local leaders can share updates to raise awareness about what is happening in the area.

While his original focus was just informing the public about the school board, he wanted to help people in other ways.

“My mom is a business owner in the township, so if I just made this ‘Voices of the Valley’ instead of just focusing on the school board, I could turn this into something to help a business that is struggling,” Licht said. “I could go down there and give them a voice. That’s really my whole goal with it.”

Licht also sat down to do a podcast with former school board president Thomas Sharkey and discussed the recent high school construction.

He plans on having more local leaders and business owners on his podcast. He said the podcast is the only time he somewhat voices his opinion.

“In my position, it is just best if I give them the platform and just emphasize their voice. Just give them that audience,” he added. “I don’t want to sit there and ruin a relationship with a person because I hate them. I feel like it is better to say, ‘What’s going on?’” Licht added that he has not made any money off his website or podcast. He does it because he enjoys informing the public, not because he is on one political side or another.

“If you don’t like what I am writing, you should go to the school board meetings and tell them that you don’t like what they are doing,” he said. “I want everything to be accurate because I don’t want anyone to say that I want to ruin this guy or I want to ruin another. It is just straight information.”

Besides informing his audience of what is going on in the area, Licht’s favorite part of doing this is when he gets an occasional “thank you” from a resident.

“That is just the greatest feeling to me, or a lot of the time, whenever I am out in public, somebody will walk up to me, and say, ‘I really like what you are doing. Keep it up.’ To me, that makes me want to keep doing as much as I possibly can, and getting as much information out because it shows that the community is involved. It’s so rewarding to me.”

More can be found at https://votv. online.