More than 100 strong, residents from Mercer and Crawford counties converged on the Fairview Township municipal building Saturday for a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Phil English, Erie, R-3rd District.

The standing-room-only crowd, twice as big as English said he expected, came with a variety of concerns but a common cause: seeking answers regarding those issues.

"This was the best town meeting I've had in a long time," said English, who earned applause on occasion and jeers at other times for his responses during the 90-minute affair to a wide range of questions, most focusing on jobs and the local economy.

Particularly compelling was the presence of several Werner Co. employees who will be among 500 workers permanently laid off by the end of summer when the Sugar Grove Township company closes its ladder and related lines.

Among them was Don Shaffer, who lives in West Salem Township with his wife and three daughters, ages 18, 14 and 6. He worked at Werner for nine years.

"English has got a lot of the right answers, but I'd just like to see a little bit more action," Shaffer told The Herald after the meeting. "I know in Washington things take time, but after a certain point it gets hard to be patient. The economy in this area -- Damascus Tube, Wheatland Tube, the fiasco that's going on right now at Werner's in Greenville -- is bad. And I might be the only person here who doesn't want anything from the government. I don't want anything from Phil English; all I want is the chance to support my family."

As, Shaffer added, do most of his co-workers.

"The decision that people I work with have to make ultimately is whether we're going to stay here, scrape by and make a meager living, or whether we're going to relocate," said Shaffer, 40. "In some respects you're going to see an exodus out of this area. To what extent I don't know, but it's going to happen. Are you going to want to stay here and work for $6 or $7 an hour or are you going to go where the jobs are? It's going to hurt our area no matter what."

Another Werner employee in attendance was George Mueller, a 10-year veteran who is married with no children.

"We've lost so many jobs in this area," said Mueller, 37, of Greenville. "I'd say Greenville's lost maybe 1,500 or 2,000 jobs in the last three years -- Trinity, now Werner's, Hodge's, and all these other places, Damascus closing and Wheatland Tube's getting hammered on -- and hopefully we can get people re-schooled and back to work or else we'll have to leave the area."

English said he realizes all too well the local economy is in a very deep recession. It has been, he added, the No. 1 issue he's heard from people at every town hall meeting he's held in recent weeks.

"The thing that is common throughout this issue is that manufacturing is flat on its back in this country, is the sector that's been hardest hit and something's got to be done," English said. "What the economists are telling us in Washington is the way to deal with that is by passing a stimulus package. Not everybody's in favor of a stimulus package, but at this point I am. We need to get the economy back on a growth path."

English believes the other big issue having a direct effect on the economy, one he said the Werner layoffs raised, is trade.

"I think we need to have a stronger trade policy," English said.

Ray Rhodes agrees.

Rhodes, 51, of Conneaut Lake, held up a 15-page document with names of nearly 250 Pennsylvania companies he said had closed down through 2002 because of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

"I challenge you to show me anywhere where you can verify that any meaningful jobs have been created by NAFTA," Rhodes, a tool and die inspector for Allegheny Tool in Meadville, told English. "It's absolutely indefensible for anybody to stand and say that NAFTA hasn't destroyed our manufacturing. And this country will never be able to survive and come out of this hole that we're in unless we can produce. You can't spend your way to prosperity."

Hermitage Commissioner Pat White echoed Rhodes' sentiments, calling for English to "go to Washington and propose to get us out of NAFTA, GATT and the World Trade Organization."

In addition to the economy, several other issues were presented to English Saturday.

Marvin Manbeck, 74, of West Middlesex, was worried about the rising costs of prescriptions. He told English that even with a 50-50 co-pay, the cost of his prescription for Zocor soared from $59.32 to $68.81 from February to March.

Gina Vadala, 31, of Sharon, said she is $40,000 in debt from school loans she used to pursue a college education and hoped English could nudge the federal government to increase grants that would help her, and others like her, to avoid incurring such overwhelming financial burdens at such a young age.

And Frank Kubiczki, 72, of Coolspring Township, expressed his fears over the fact that the Social Security program may be in the red in a little over a decade and perhaps broke in 40 years.

You can e-mail Herald Political Writer Jeff Greenburg at jgreenburg@sharonherald.com.