Allegheny County says it can’t be savior to struggling North Braddock
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When North Braddock’s leaders look for a hero, their gaze turns first to Grant Street. Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, though, maintains that his powers are limited, and that the potential saviors of Mon Valley towns sit in Harrisburg and Washington, D. C.
The borough is unable to tear down its 400- odd abandoned houses. Its police make as little as $ 12.87 an hour, no benefits. Some in its leadership hope that proposed fracking on U. S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson Works property will bring revenue, but many residents worry about resulting pollution.
“We need Robin Hood to come in, take from the rich and give to the poor,” borough council Vice President Michael Dobrinich said in a June interview.
Mr. Fitzgerald said he understands the problems of communities like North Braddock and is doing what he can with the few arrows in his quiver.
It’s hard to give a community “some hope that there can be revitalization and growth” when it is littered with abandoned structures, he said in a June interview.
“It’s obviously got challenges,” he said of North Braddock. “And many of the communities that we’ve talked about in the MonVal-ley struggle with [ maintaining] the
tax base needed to provide services.”
Since 2013, the county has funded 27 projects in the borough totaling more than $ 2.6 million, according to Mr. Fitzgerald’s spokeswoman. A $ 100,000 county grant approved last year is now going toward the demolition of a row of houses on Bell Avenue, in the heart of the borough. The county may yet approve $ 100,000 to cover construction of a proposed playground.
But this year, the county has said no to the borough’s request for $ 155,000 to raze 10 more houses and to an emergency request for funds to tear down a house that is leaning on a home inhabited by a mother and two children, ages 3 and 2.
County officials argue that federal rules limit the amount of community block grant money that can be used for demolition, and thus they were able to fund only roughly half of the demolitions proposed by 32 municipalities.
Can the county — which has touted its fiscal stability and healthy reserve fund — reach deep and fund demolitions from its own pocket? No, Mr. Fitzgerald said. “Those resources aren’t really available,” he said, because of the county’s limited revenue- raising power. “The only thing the county really collects is property tax.”
He has joined Gov. Tom Wolf’s call for a Restore Pennsylvania fund filled with revenue from a severance tax on natural gas wells. And Mr. Fitzgerald is hoping for a federal infrastructure funding bill.
He’s also supportive of a pending state bill that would allow municipalities to disincorporate and rely on counties for services. And he’s a cheerleader for consolidation of services — including policing — among multiple municipalities but is leaving the details and decisions to local leaders.
North Braddock council President John Vahosky is looking for more.
“Somebody bigger than North Braddock has to come in” and chart a path, he said.
The borough is participating in talks on a regional Mon Valley police department and is open to ideas, Mr. Vahosky said.
“But we need somebody of a higher power to come in and say, ‘ This is what has to happen,’” he said. “If they leave it up to the municipalities and individuals, you’re not going to see it happen.”
Mr. Fitzgerald’s stance that the county has limited tools to solve the problems of distressed communities is unlikely to stem the requests for help.
“The way I see it, the county owes us” for both the borough’s historic importance in building the region and for its new role of taking in people driven from the city by gentrification, said Lisa Franklin, Democratic nominee for a seat on North Braddock council. “That’s what I’m going to Fitzgerald with. Make sure that Greater Pittsburgh looks as good as inner Pittsburgh.”