New walks crumbing in Point State Park

Sidewalks installed less than two years ago as part of a $7 million renovation of Point State Park are already starting to crumble. Read More

Clarifying Pittsburgh’s Employment Picture

Pittsburgh's mayoral race has produced some heated rhetoric about the jobs situation in the City. One candidate has criticized the Mayor's characterization of the unemployment situation as being better than the state and nation, saying that it's offensive to those out of work and that the region's September unemployment rate stood at a 23-year high. The Mayor's spokesman replied that the candidate doesn't understand statistics and repeated the claim that the City unemployment rate is lower than the rate for the country, state and region. A third candidate argues there are pockets of economic hardships throughout the City's neighborhoods where people cannot find jobs.


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Common Sense for Mayoral Candidates

This year, Pittsburgh voters will cast ballots for the office of Mayor. The four year term will last until the beginning of 2014. What will the City look like then? It is very difficult to imagine in light of all the major issues the City faces and all the changes Pittsburgh has undergone in recent years. Declining population and school enrollment, staggering debt and pension liabilities, neighborhoods with high crime, excessive spending, crushing taxes and little net job growth appear to have become intractable and a permanent part of the political and economic landscape. Obviously, how the City deals with these issues will play a huge role in what the City will become by 2014. Continue

$10 Million Cleared For Take Off

The renovation of a runway at Pittsburgh International Airport, which is mostly used at night for noise abatement reasons, will be one of the first projects to receive federal stimulus funds for airports around the country. Do we have pot holes on the runway now?

The Federal Aviation Authority will allocate $10 million to Pittsburgh International to repair the runway. The county airport in West Mifflin will receive $2 million to renovate a taxiway and relocate a ramp.

Under the stimulus package, the FAA received $1 billion to allocate to qualified airports on a discretionary basis. Federal officials said that funding will be allocated based on a project priority system that addresses airport safety and security, infrastructure, runway safety, increased capacity and mitigation of environmental impacts.

Vendors venting over fire contract

What does Sweden, Ohio and Pittsburgh have in common?

Pittsburgh firehouses are getting new systems for venting diesel exhaust fumes, but some vendors are raising a stink about a city process that excluded American-made products and local installation teams in favor of an Ohio firm that installs imported equipment from Swedish manufacturer Nederman Inc.

At issue is the city's federally funded $977,550 project. The job went to Toledo-area Clean Air Systems Inc.

The city has so far paid $145,252 to outfit four fire stations. The invoice for the Forbes Avenue station totals $41,190, for rail-hose-and-duct systems for three vehicles, or $13,730 each.If the city spends the entire budgeted amount contemplated on its 49 fire trucks and some of its ambulances, its costs will be around $17,000 per vehicle. Of the cost, 80 percent is covered by a federal Department of Homeland Security grant, with the rest coming from city funds.

Mike Miklosko, owner of Hempstead-based EMS Specialty Equipment, which also installs such systems, called the price the city is paying "highway robbery."Mr. Miklosko, said he charges around $6,500 per vehicle. In Canonsburg, he bid $32,000 for a five-vehicle firehouse, winning a competitive process against three other firms.

City Council to vote on ban on couches, mattresses on porches

Having a couch, love seat or spare mattress on your porch could be illegal in Pittsburgh if City Council makes final a tentative vote it took yesterday.

All of the council members present voted for legislation banning mattresses, box springs, sofas and upholstered chairs from non-enclosed porches, primarily to prevent the celebratory burning of such items, as has happened repeatedly in Oakland.

Yeah keep those things in your home and drag them out after a win.

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Port Authority's Convenient Memory Loss

In an effort to explain the recent revelation that the North Shore Connector would need another $117.8 million to complete—bringing the total cost to $553 million—a Port Authority (PAT) spokesperson said the project’s cost was based on valid estimates for normal conditions. According to PAT the problem was drastic increases in costs that were not anticipated. Continue

Proposal to Lease Parking to Fund Pensions Raises Opportunities, Questions

Seeking a major infusion of cash for the City’s three pension plans, the Mayor of Pittsburgh has proposed leasing parking facilities owned by the City’s Parking Authority. The Mayor is to be commended for this groundbreaking approach as it represents the type of new thinking Pittsburgh needs. Continue

$553 Million and Counting for PAT’s Big Dig

We knew it was coming. The folks at the Port Authority (PAT) have now admitted what everyone has known for some time: $435 million will not be enough to complete Allegheny County’s biggest boondoggle so far in the 21st century. We are being told the infamous North Shore Connector project will need another $117.8 million to cover the cost overruns PAT now reckons will occur. Of course, the cost overruns are blamed on unexpected construction cost increases no one could have foreseen back in September 2006 when the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) gave final approval to the $435 million project. The FTA committed $270 million in new funding while another $80 million or so in Federal funds are being diverted from other Southwest Pennsylvania transportation projects. State and County funds make up the remainder. Continue

Little Cheer for Taxpayers in Transit Contract

If the Port Authority (PAT) and Local 85 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) agree to sign off on a tentative agreement that will set contract terms through 2012, the two parties will be walking arm-in-arm in a march to create a national health care system. Continue

County Solicitor’s Opinion on Shaky Grounds

The drink tax referendum question—the one generated by the petition drive—has apparently passed muster from the Department of Elections as far as the number of signatures required, but it is about to get hung up in what could be a major legal battle based on a County Law Department opinion calling the referendum question illegal. Continue

Plan to hand out 250,000 Bibles

If all goes according to plan, on Sept. 7 when Allegheny County subscribers to the Post-Gazette unwrap their Sunday paper, they will find a New Testament in an advertising pouch like those used for sample soaps or cereals.

The New International Version translation will have a front cover showing the Golden Triangle, a back cover photograph of Steelers kneeling in prayer and will include testimonies of well-known Pittsburghers. The goal is to reach 250,000 subscribers in Allegheny County and some border communities. If they raise enough money, they would like to add deliveries to 150,000 non-subscribers.

Pittsburgh will be the sixth city for CityReachers, a program of the International Bible Society based in Colorado Springs. After a pilot project there in 2004, the Bible society hired the Barna Research Group to measure its impact.

Based on the Barna findings, Pittsburgh organizers project that a distribution of 400,000 here would result in 36,400 people reading the Bible more often or for the first time; 19,809 making a commitment or recommitment to the Christian faith; 11.207 attending church more often; and 4,385 attending for the first time.

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$15 MIllion Found in Pittsburgh Subway

A mural in a PAT subway station is worth $15 million. You would think that would be good news, but the station is to be demolished.

"We did not expect it to be that much," Port Authority of Allegheny County spokeswoman Judi McNeil said. "We don't have the wherewithal to be a caretaker of such a valuable piece."

It would cost the agency more than $100,000 a year to insure the 60-foot-by-13-foot tile mural by Romare Bearden, McNeil said. Bearden was paid $90,000 for the mural, titled "Pittsburgh Recollections." It was installed in 1984.

Why the agency thought it was a good idea to spend 90k on art underground is another issue.

The subway station that is home to the mural is being demolished as part of a $435 million plan to extend the subway. The authority didn't know what it was going to do with the mural but wanted to know its value before taking it down, McNeil said.

Only a public agency could spend $90,000 to buy a 15 million dollar piece and pay $435 million to have it destroyed. The county this year implemented a 10 percent alcoholic drink tax and $2-per-day car rental tax to help pay its $30 million subsidy for the Port Authority.

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Barden's $3 MiIllion Nevermind

North Shore casino developer Don Barden wants to drop a $3 million commitment he made to support Hill District redevelopment efforts .

In a petition filed with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, Mr. Barden's company, PITG Gaming LLC, asked for permission to eliminate the financial commitment of $1 million annually for three years "due to the grant of the development rights to another party." The language is a reference to the award of development rights for the 28-acre Mellon Arena property to the Penguins last year as part of negotiations over a new building for the team.

Barden did not reach a deal therefore he want to keep the cash. The problem is the commitment of $1 million annually for three consecutive years is one of the 57 formal conditions the gaming board imposed in awarding Mr. Barden the license for the casino in December 2006.

Stay Tuned

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More Unsettling Confusion Emanates From the Port Authority

With all the talk about the need for a City-County merger so the region can speak with one voice, it seems the County government might be hearing multiple ones inside its own head. That’s the only explanation making any sense when the County Executive said in Executive Order 2007-1 that Allegheny County is legally required to provide the Port Authority (PAT) with annual funding while at the same time vowing to withhold state required local match funds until PAT’s unions make substantial concessions. Now, to further complicate the picture, the County has, as of this writing, voiced no opposition to the revelation that PAT is making plans to borrow the money necessary to receive state funds and keep the transit system unions on the job. Continue

Barden report shows big losses at casinos

The losses are piling up for Don Barden's casinos in Indiana, Mississippi and Colorado, but one top company official insisted yesterday the financial woes won't have any impact on Mr. Barden's $450 million slots parlor scheduled to open next year on Pittsburgh's North Shore. Read More

As the Burg Turns: Lamar refuses to stop billboard construction

The city of Pittsburgh is great. The people running it are a bunch of idiots. Public service does not mean the public is here to serve them.

All the backroom deals are coming home to roost and it's getting ugly. Yesterday Pat Ford, the head if the Urban Redevelopment Authorty, (can anyone tell me what the heck they do?) was asked to resign. Why? Well we weren't told. We do know he may have accepted gifts and played a role in a sweetheart deal for Pittsburgh's Lamar Advertising.

Even the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development asked Ford to resign from his post as chairman of the Pittsburgh Housing Authority board. Yet instead of resigning, Mr. Ford is on on paid leave pending an investigation. PAID leave. Did you get that? He get's paid NOT to go to work. How do I get that deal?

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's spokeswoman happens to be the wife of Mr. Ford. Now she is just a wife, because Alecia Sirk resigned from the Mayor's office yesterday. You should have asked for paid leave Alecia.

Luke Ravenstahl said the URA board will ask the State Ethics Commission to review Mr. Ford's receipt of gifts from Lamar Advertising. But while the investigation gets underway, Lamar is thumbing their nose at the city.

According to lawyers for Lamar Advertising, they will not stop construction on a contested Downtown billboard, arguing the council members will have to seek an injunction and post bond to halt their efforts. Basically they told the city to shove it in spite of an appeal of their permit, and a provision in the city code that says an appeal "shall automatically stay all actions" being taken under the permit.

There currently is a lawsuit filed alleging that council members engaged in a "plot" to nix the permit that may have included secret meetings and abuses of power.

This is a mess that never should have happened. How does a company get a permit, start construction and then get challenged? Why does the URA have any role in this? Why isn't the Mayor and Council working together on these issues? See my first sentence for the answer.

Not Yet: Pittsburgh still needs oversight, state says

Despite fiscal progress, Pittsburgh is not ready to shed financial oversight, state overseers said Tuesday night. Read More

School Lessons from Milwaukee

Pittsburgh’s population continues to fall and could dip below 300,000 in the 2010 Census if recent trends continue. There can be little doubt that much of the population loss can be blamed on the outrageously expensive, poorly performing Pittsburgh Public School District. Substantial numbers of parents interested in a better education for their children, and who cannot afford private schooling, are moving out of the City to take advantage of better schools. Is there a way to stem this outflow? Former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist believes school choice offers a real opportunity to stop and eventually reverse this long time trend. Continue

DEMOCRATS CLAIM MCCAIN NEARLY SWITCHED PARTIES

From the story: Daschle said that throughout April and May of 2001, he and McCain “had meetings and conversations on the floor and in his office, I think in mine as well, about how we would do it, what the conditions would be. We talked about committees and his seniority … [A lot of issues] were on the table.” McCain denies considering the switch. (The Hill)

Another story notes Kerry’s courting of McCain. (Outside the Beltway)

While some on the right are reconsidering McCain (NY Times) others aren’t.