City council works to create trust fund for new parks tax revenue

Mayor Bill Peduto is offering “all assistance from all departments” to council as they craft legislation to create a trust fund for the new parks tax revenue, he said.

An opinion issued Tuesday by the city’s Law Department found “multiple conflicts” in a current draft introduced in January by two council members.

“Our conversations with [Council] President [Theresa] Kail-Smith have been more along the lines of, instead of having nine separate bills coming from each council member, to assign a small committee of council members to then work with their colleagues to create draft legislation that they’re all a part of creating and then amend as needed at the table through a public process, inviting the public to be a part of it,” he said during a wide-ranging news conference Thursday in the Mayor’s Conference Room, Downtown.

Only one draft ordinance to create the Parks Trust Fund has been introduced by members Anthony Coghill and Deb Gross. The Jan. 21 proposal also sought to establish the nine council members as trustees and house the fund in the City Clerk’s budget line — points with which the Law Department takes issue.

Additionally, not all council members were on board with the proposal’s aim to split the tax money equally among the nine council districts.

“This is not the first time that enabling legislation has been needed by city council for a referendum,” Mr. Peduto said. “In fact, during the [creation of the] Citizens Police Review Board, I was the staff member who worked for then-Councilman Dan Cohen, who was the chair of a committee created by the council president to draft enabling legislation.”

At Wednesday’s council standing committee meeting, Ms. KailSmith asked Mr. Coghill and Councilman Ricky Burgess — because they have “such strong opinions” — to “work together with the administration, come up with some drafts, come back to council with briefings so that we can all have our say.”

As of Friday afternoon, neither Mr. Coghill nor Mr. Burgess had scheduled meetings with the administration, according to both of the councilmen’s offices.

Mr. Coghill said he plans to meet with the Law Department next week to “go through my questions one by one with them. The important thing is getting this [ordinance] to where we can collect the tax and start to fix the parks up.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Peduto’s administration will introduce legislation to formally get the tax on the books for 2020. Council still must pass legislation to create the trust fund.

Mr. Peduto supported the

November ballot referendum that asked residents to fund city parks by increasing property taxes by a half mill, or $50 on every $100,000 of assessed real estate value. Four council members, including an outgoing member, opposed the referendum, which was championed by the nonprofit Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy. The initiative passed in a close vote, with some city neighborhoods polarized on the issue.

Residents will not see the tax reflected on this year’s first-quarter tax bills but will receive a separate parks tax bill later this year, according to the city’s Department of Finance.