Less Waste in a Bad Economy?

After recent glowing reviews from the New York Times to Cleveland, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette appears to be picking up the happy Pittsburgh glow.

Latest breaking news? We ranked 14th least wasteful city. Of course, this ranking is out of 25 cities, which puts us (barely) in the bottom half of cities, or 12th most wasteful city. To put that into perspective, Detroit comes in at number 13.

Clearly, we'll never beat New York City in terms of public transportation usage, but there are a few things we should improve on to crack the top ten.

1) More library usage. We have a great resource in the Carnegie libraries and some of them rival Barnes & Noble for atmosphere, yet somehow Pittsburgh ranked 18th in library usage. Save some money, and visit your local library the next time you want something to read or watch. If you do this, and you realize, you're saving oodles of cash while feeling better about the environment, take Brian O'Neill's advice and give a little back to your library.

2) Less driving. We ranked 25th out of 25 in terms of driving instead of walking when you're going less than 2 miles. Spring has arrived, so get out of your car and put your walking shoes on. If you start walking more, you might even find you look better in a bathing suit this summer.

3) More energy efficient light bulbs. As a city, we came in at a fairly respectable number 15 in this category, but it's a joke to switch over to LED street lights, while we don't even change the lights in our home. Manufacturers are practically giving these bulbs away now. With their new styles and wattage options, there's no excuse for you to not have energy efficient light bulbs in every room of your house. Here in Peru, every light bulb is energy efficient. They're not doing it to save the environment. They're doing it save money. So stop whining about your electric bill and change your bulbs. I literally cut my electric bill in half last year when I switched out most of my bulbs.

Kudos to the Post-Gazette for a positive headline. Try it again the next time unemployment rates re-surface. At 6.5% for February, Allegheny County is well under the state unemployment rate (7.5%) and the national rate (8.1%). The 7-county region falls in at 6.9%. Yet the latest headline for the Post-Gazette regarding unemployment? "Local jobless rate increases at fastest pace since '80s"

In summary, don't get too happy about our environmental progress, and keep those jobless rates in perspective.

A Sign Of Worried Folks

The Steelers are going to the Super Bowl and Obama was inaugurated this week.

So what is the theme of the "most e-mailed" stories from the Post-Gazette?

Most E-mailed Stories

1. Filene's Basement in Waterfront reportedly closing
2. Mountain View Inn closing in Westmoreland County
3. Highmark merger called off
4. Old Navy closing Century III Mall store
5. Mountain View Inn abruptly announces closing

Ouch. I guess we do care about something besides football.

Fire Bill Steigerwald

Dear Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

Please fire Bill Steigerwald.

I haven't read such vitriol since reading about Nazi Germany in high school.

Oh, wait but that's fitting. He compares talking positively about Pittsburgh to talking positively about Nazis.

He goes on to spout ridiculous fallacies:

Nor did the Times note that Pittsburgh’s ever-dwindling, ever-aging, relatively poor and under-educated population (down in the city to 310,000 from 650,000 about 50 years) is subjected to crippling high taxes and deprived of basic city services like reliable snow-plowing.

Does he live in Pittsburgh? I do. My street gets plowed. I'm not "crippled" by high taxes. And nullspace has many many things to say on our young people NOT fleeing. Under-educated population??? Is he a moron?

Yes, we're in debt. But we're hardly alone in that. NYC was in ridiculous debt in the 70s yet somehow managed to become the poster-child for our country. They still haven't paid it off.

Yes, there are school problems, but as far as I can tell, Pittsburgh has some programs in place that are trying to address these issues. And please give me a city that doesn't have problems with schools. Maybe Philadelphia? How about LA?

You see, cities that have pioneered deindustrialization, shed huge chunks of population and shifted to service economies that run on curing sick people, college kids and government bureaucrats, as the former Steel City basically does, are now recession-proof, the rationalizing goes, because they’ve essentially been in low-grade recessions for decades.

Bill seems to be the only one in the country who thinks that an economy based on health care and education is a bad economic plan. Have you seen the number of Rite-Aids and CVSs that litter the landscape? And if a 3.9% unemployment rate is low-grade recession, he must think the whole country's been in a recession for decades.

This is a man who clearly hates his hometown, the city of Pittsburgh. Please, don't continue to pay him to write about it. He's pretty old. If you feel bad about kicking him to the curb, you can couch it in terms of your recent buy-out.

Sincerely,

pghisacity

Ra Ra Ra

In more cheerleading from the national press, Pittsburgh ranks as one of the top 5 strongest housing markets this year. Now, don't all go try to sell your house at once to mess that up.

That does mean that when you get laid off you may still be able to borrow against your house if you can't afford COBRA payments. "The average monthly cost to that [laid off] worker to continue family health benefits under COBRA was $1,069, or 83.6 percent of the unemployment check." I paid for COBRA for 2 months last year before rolling over into a private health insurance policy. It's damned expensive. Now is the time to do something about health care in this country.

Well That Answers That

The great Pittsburgh hotel mystery that nullspace has reported on has now been solved.

We are now piling up a list of projects in Pittsburgh that had been temporarily shelved in spite of our unemployment rate hovering well under 7.2%.

The projects that I'm aware of that have been shelved:

• The "crowning jewel" of the SouthSide Works complex - a hotel/condo funtime
• The entertainment complex on the North Side - not a hotel but still postponed - supposedly still starting the hotel
  
• The Bloomfield hotel project -shelved because of disagreements but secretly the developer was relieved to get more financing time
  
• And last but certainly not least the Cultural District Riverfront Development megaproject

What does this mean? That unlike what developers were hoping, Pittsburgh is not immune to the dismal economy. However, this list still leaves quite a few hotels to be worked on. And Target is humming along as far as I know.

Of course, sometimes, the delay isn't because of financing, it's because of hooking up the utilities. Even Hofbrauhaus has to wait for the cable guy.