Folks in Johnstown have been working together to help beautify their community, but as they take one step forward, they often take two steps back.

“It started to become more of a natural setting and then the graffiti started happening on the walls, which was always left alone when I grew up here,” says Joe Warhul.  A life-long resident, Warhul, remembers Johnstown during its glory days.

“It’s always been a friendly place and I would say the last 5 or 10 years it seems like it has gotten really bad.  It’s drugs, it’s lack of jobs, it just seems like an overall community morale seems to be down.”

So he, along with others are working to restore the community.  On the Jim Mayor Trail in the city’s Moxham neighborhood, they’ve painted a wall, covered graffiti, and collected 30 bags of trash, but the vandalism hasn’t stopped.

Warhul comes to the trail every day for a majority of the year.  Earlier this week he found several stamp bags, which are used for Heroin,  along the trail again.  He says he has never had this problem before this year.

“I don’t know why they do it,” says resident Randy Gajewski.  “I mean a lot of good effort goes into this from a lot of good people.”

Warhul tells us finding the stamp bags is not only frustrating, but he worries about the neighboring kids and homes as well.  He turned the bags over to the Cambria County Drug Task Force and the police department.  He also asked for help to make the area more family friendly, “I mean who would want to bring their kids somewhere, take them for a walk, and find somebody shooting up or even overdosed in the middle of a hiking trail?”

Warhul has a few cameras up in the troubled areas, but they believe it’s going to take the efforts of the entire community to be able to stop this problem.

“I think people are getting more frustrated and I think a lot of the residents are going to start stepping forward and just taking a stand,” Gajewski says.