Skewer Me Now

As a preface to this post, I thoroughly expect to be mocked and criticized for supporting Ravenstahl's plan here. Please, feel free.

But I'm trying to figure out why Ravenstahl's new idea to lease the parking garages and take any lump sum profit to throw at the pension fund is bad? How is it not a great idea in fact?

Should the city really be involved in the day-to-day running of parking garages?

Chicago leased their parking garages for 99 years and made $563 Million.

According to the 2007 Annual Report, Pittsburgh Parking Authority appeared to make an operating income of $13 Million.

To offset that, we pay into the pension funds upwards of $38 Million per year. I'm going to make a radical assumption that we could cut that down to $25 Million per year (and cut Parking Authority's profits out of the budget) if we could inject a huge amount of cash into the pension funds. Similarly, we have a relatively small amount of debt associated with the Parking Authority - $100 Million. Chicago had $278 Million. Chicago's garages were only bringing in $5 Million per year as opposed to our profit monsters.

Of course, I have a few questions.

1) Why are people so concerned about parking rates going up? I understand parking is difficult to find and expensive in this city. It's supply and demand. Without the city of Pittsburgh subsidizing parking garages, this will turn into a true capitalist arrangement. The city of Pittsburgh will continue lowering their parking tax rate. And if people continue to fill expensive parking garages, they will be expensive. If people are willing to take the subway from Station Square or the up-and-coming North Shore Connector, they'll save money. They'll save even more money if they take the bus. Will businesses really leave the city because rates go up a few dollars? And will rates really go up more than the market can bear?

2) Is this plan really going to fly in the face of a nation-wide recession? Did Ravenstahl pick some really poor timing to ask folks to pony up a few hundred million dollars? Does any business have that ability right now?

If Ravenstahl pulls this off and can get our pensions to a point where we expect them to be healthily funded, then he might actually earn his landslide victory this time around in spite of his ridiculousness.

Less Than $20 Million

According to the Steelers and VisitPittsburgh, the home AFC championship game should bring in $20 million to the city on Sunday. That's on top of the $18 million for last week's game.

And how much extra are these games adding to the drink tax coffers alone? I'm going to make an educated guess and say that if you take the drink tax profits from Steelers Sundays, that alone will easily land you $1 Million per year.

The North Shore Connector is costing the county 3.33% of its total cost - or about $15 million. Even if it balloons to a $600 million project, that's still less than $20 million in local funds.

Don't you think a new subway line is worth 1 home Steelers championship game?

I can go over the Port Authority spiel that this paves the way for future T lines. Or that this will add yet another fringe parking area alleviating traffic and parking woes downtown. Or that this will encourage more development on the North Side which needs some help right about now.

But instead I'll tell you why I think it's not a horrible idea.

When out-of-towners or former Pittsburghers come back to visit in droves, it's for one of two things. The holidays and Steelers games.

Theoretically, we want to give these people a good impression. We want them to think their city is improving. We want them to go back to where they live and say good things about Pittsburgh. We want them to tell their friends, so that when they get a job offer and they're deciding between Houston, Texas and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, they remember that they heard Pittsburgh was sweet. They choose Pittsburgh.

How do we impress these people? We give them slick public transportation where they're going to use it. To the Steelers game and to the airport. Assuming this risky bet works, then those people will get up and move here. Then we'll have some money in our pockets and we can do more practical less flashy things like actually get people between Oakland and Downtown.

And all for less than $20 million.

But the most important thing to realize is that this is just a piece of the puzzle. If we actually want a world-class transportation system (which we do, right?), then this is a necessary piece of that puzzle. Might as well build it first if we have the money and it can attract and impress some people. We just can't stop here. I don't care if it takes another 50-100 years. (I have faith that Pittsburgh and this country will still be around then.) But we need to keep building and planning and thinking big and we will get there.

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

Full Circle

So Luke has changed his mind on campaign finance reform. He and my best friend Dan are teaming up to pass a law in city and county council to limit campaign contributions.

The question on everyone's mind is why did Luke change his mind?

If this law had passed 6 months ago, Luke wouldn't have been able to save his pennies from the DeSantis campaign where he didn't even bother with television commercials. Now, there's no way in hell it will be preventing him from using his little "war chest."

And why should a man whose friends can convince Bill Clinton to have a little fundraising luncheon for him nowhere near an actual election care about individual campaign limits? $750,000 in one day on $500/plate sandwiches is enough for almost any local campaign.

My bet is on Luke ultimately running for the highest office in Allegheny County after his stint as mayor and leaving the city to hot-head Shields or Dowd whose claim to fame appears to be that he has held public office as long as the Mayor. I can't wait for these debates.

My questions?
1) If it's so important for us all to be the same, why not just follow Philadelphia's example?? Do individuals really need to contribute $4600 instead of $2600. They also have some pretty slick safeguards such as accounting for inflation every four years. Importantly, Philadelphia's law has already held up in court.

2) As Chris Potter says, why aren't campaign contributions posted online? Transparency had better be a part of this bill or the likelihood of its actually getting enforced are slim to none. And can we please take this as an opportunity to combine county and city forces to have ONE campaign contributions website?

My vote? If there is a multi-millionaire in the audience, give a million to Ms Robinson. Let's shake things up around here.

Break the Yoke

What do my favorite Mexican tienda and my favorite 50s style diner have in common? They're in blighted neighborhoods along light-rail tracks. Between tax dollars for transit-area development, the drink tax, and a general scare of gasoline prices, public transportation and these potentially vibrant areas are getting even more attention.

Not surprisingly, people are discovering it's fun to break the yoke of the car. Even if they have to commute to work during the week, they're excited to walk to their quaint neighborhood market on the weekend and not deal with the evil demon of Penn DOT road-closings. Or maybe after sitting in rush hour traffic to get home, they just want to walk over to the neighborhood bar for happy hour. Personally, I learned this lesson after a month of driving in NYC-area traffic.

Up until now, the transit-center focus in Pittsburgh has been on East Liberty. Target, Whole Foods, and the East Busway are proving to be a sound marriage. Now is the time to learn from our lessons and expand. The money is flowing and our neighborhoods need help. Our love affair with strip malls and McMansions can come to an end or at least learn to co-habitate with pedestrian-friendly fun urban environments where going for a walk doesn't have to be on a treadmill and where going out for a night-on-the-town doesn't involve any parking headaches or traffic and where buying a house still can cost less than $50,000.

On second thought, don't redevelop these neighborhoods. I don't want my favorite businesses driven out from high rent prices or over-run with band-wagoners. (Yes, that was a joke.)

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.