The Week in review A driving force for more drivers
A BRIEF ROUNDUP OF THE LOCAL NEWS OF THE WEEK
We love our sports around here — even when our hockey team limps out of the playoffs in an upset and our baseball team has the worst record in the majors.
One of the big stories last week was Gov. Tom Wolf recommending recreational and interscholastic sports in the state be postponed until Jan. 1 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We ought to avoid any congregate settings,” Mr. Wolf said Thursday morning. “That means anything that brings people together is going to help that virus get us. We ought to do everything we can to defeat that virus.”
State officials made it clear this was a “strong recommendation and not an order or mandate.”
Staff writers Mike White and Steve Rotstein set about finding out how this will impact local high school sports. Unfortunately, all the answers sound like questions.
The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association board of directors responded by delaying the start of high school sports by two weeks and is pursuing a meeting with the governor’s office to address the matter further.
Officials with Pittsburgh Public Schools on Thursday said they are leaning toward postponing fall sports and marching band and will vote on the recommendation at its Aug. 26 meeting. The WPIAL, which comprises more than 100 schools in Western Pennsylvania, has scheduled a news conference for 10 a.m. Monday at the WPIAL offices in Green Tree.
Back to school means what it says
Students in Pittsburgh Public Schools won’t be in Pittsburgh’s public schools for the first nine weeks of the year because of COVID19, but district administrators last week said they expect all staff members to return to their buildings by early October.
David May-Stein, the district’s chief of school performance, told staff writer Andrew Goldstein the presence of staff will enable the district to provide students with better support. Also, preparations for reopening the schools “can’t be done in isolation without staff input,” he said.
Meanwhile, school officials said they’re afraid they won’t have all the laptops or iPads they had wanted to provide each student on the first day of school. Apparently, there’s a nationwide backlog on the devices, so they’re going to come up short.
Ted Dwyer — chief of data, research, evaluation and assessment for the Pittsburgh Public Schools — said Wednesday the hope is some families will be able to make use of their own personal devices until the thousands the district has ordered arrive.
Take your time to make your future
Speaking of promises, The Pittsburgh Promise said Thursday it will not penalize recipients who choose to take a gap year away from their studies because of COVID-19.
The scholarship usually covers students for four years of college or a trade school after graduation, but the classes of 2017 through 2020 will have five years of coverage.
The Promise said it made the accommodation to ensure students who must — or choose — to take a year off because of COVID-19 will have the ability to continue to attend the post-secondary school of their choice.
“Our message to those students is this: Your scholarship will be waiting for you, but you have to come back, and you have to finish,” said Saleem Ghubril, executive director of the
Promise. “Your dreams are still within reach.’”
Eligibility criteria and the maximum amount of money per student will not change, according to the Promise.
Since its inception in 2006, the Promise has invested more than $146 million in scholarships to send nearly 10,000 urban youths to a post-secondary institution. More than 3,300 of them have graduated.
Say, isn’t that cyclist Chancellor Gallagher?
Students at the University of Pittsburgh learned riding a bike is not only an inexpensive way to get around. It also can be free.
Staff writer Ed Blazina reported the university and Healthy Ride, the city’s bikesharing program, announced Wednesday they will expand last year’s pilot for first-year students and resident assistants to include almost everyone on campus, including faculty and staff.
Those eligible will receive an email from the university with a code allowing them to set up an account with Healthy Ride that will provide an unlimited number of 30-minute rides for free. They will be charged $2 for every additional 30 minutes on the same ride, but they could ride for 30 minutes, park the bike at another station while they visit or shop, then ride back for another 30 minutes, all at no charge.
Healthy Ride has 17 bike stations in and around the university’s Oakland campus, the most of any area except for Downtown.
Ed also reported that Port Authority officials said they’re concerned they won’t have enough drivers to operate a full schedule on Aug. 23, when the agency plans to end its COVID-19 cutbacks.
For five months, they’ve been allowing employees with health or family issues to stay home with pay. But now they’ve ordered everyone who isn’t sick or quarantined to report.
Still, they’re not panicking.
“That’s honestly not a new problem for us,” said spokesman Jim Ritchie. “We’ve battled through the pandemic to meet service requirements. This will be no different.”
They did, however, have a problem with the union representing drivers and maintenance workers after the agency disciplined two operators for wearing masks that say “Black Lives Matter.”
The two drivers were sent home Aug. 5 for wearing the masks and face a disciplinary hearing Tuesday.
Local 85 of the Amalgamated Transit Union on Friday said Port Authority violated the free speech rights of its members with an amended dress code that prohibits buttons, stickers, jewelry or clothing, including face masks, that include a political or social protest message.
President and business agent Steve Palonis sent a letter to the agency July 23 in which he called the policy “a prior restraint on employees’ speech” and said it is “overly broad and void for vagueness.”
Mr. Palonis pointed out buses regularly promote messages of support for community issues and local sports teams.
“It is clear the Port Authority is picking and choosing what message and what content it permits to be disseminated,” he said. “It’s unconstitutional.”
Mr. Ritchie said while the agency opposes systemic racism, it has a “uniform policy that prohibits social and political statements of all kinds.”
Children’s Museum employees let go
Staff writer Marylynne Pitz reported the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh will not bring back 129 furloughed employees — almost three-quarters of its staff — when the North Side museum reopens in January.
The museum, which had 175 employees, closed to the public on March 13 because of the pandemic. On April 1, the museum furloughed 129 employees — 104 part-timers and 25 full-timers, museum spokesman Max Pipman said.
Forty-six employees remain, and 38 of them are managers. Some are needed to maintain museum buildings, he said.
A letter posted on Twitter signed by 67 former employees criticized the museum’s actions and leadership.
The employees alleged the museum’s leaders“regularly used and manipulated Black communities to receive funding and continued foundation support, without investing time or interest in our programs there. Museum leadership made no effort to genuinely connect with communities, nor did they try to understand the experiences of Black teachers and Black students.”
The letter also claimed “the majority of the museum’s Black, Indigenous and Persons of Color staff hold cleaning or service positions — jobs the museum’s leadership views as less valuable to the museum community.”
Museum leaders contacted the letter’s author to discuss the allegations on the telephone or through email, Mr. Pipman said, but the author rejected that request. Since receiving the letter, “we have been listening, learning and having tough and honest conversations about it,” he said.
Meanwhile, in the bug world
You know those longlegged, speckled gray-andmauve bugs with the bright red underwings? They’re called spotted lanternflies, and they like to attach themselves to trucks. Especially trucks carrying grapes, apples, peaches and hardwood — all of which the invasive species originating in East Asia loves to feed on.
Staff writer Janine Faust reported the state, mindful of protecting its exports, imposed quarantine measures that require truck drivers in certain counties to fill out a daily report confirming they checked their rigs for the insect.
The pests turned up in Allegheny and Beaver counties in March.
Experts at Penn State Extension conducted a 2019 study that found trucking services in forestry and agriculture could lose up to $5.8 million and $30 million, respectively, if they’re forced to manage the bug’s presence statewide. And a worst-case scenario could put Pennsylvania’s losses at $554 million a year and almost 5,000 jobs.
More tick talk
And what about the blacklegged ticks that transmit Lyme disease to thousands of Pennsylvanians every year? They’re still out there, too.
Lyme disease can be transmitted to humans when a tick attaches itself for 36 to 48 hours.
Symptoms can resemble those of a bad flu: fatigue, chills and fever, headache, muscle and joint pain. The disease can be treated with antibiotics, but left untreated, it can cause arthritis pain in joints, numbness, facial paralysis, meningitis, heart arrhythmia and memory loss.
Staff writer Don Hopey reported, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since 2011, Pennsylvania has led the nation in the number of Lyme disease cases. Over the past five years, we’ve averaged more than 10,000 cases a year.
Leah Lamonte, the vector control program coordinator for the Allegheny County Health Department, said most people come in contact with the ticks in wooded areas.
“We’re seeing a lot more people using the parks, but as long as people stay on trails, they can be pretty safe,” she said. “I tell people to think like a tick. They like cool, moist, shaded areas on the edges of fields or lawns and woods. If you are hiking and stay in the center of a trail, you should be pretty good.”
Remembering Aggie
Aggie Brose, a founding member of the BloomfieldGarfield Corp., spent more than four decades working for the betterment of her community. She died in July 2019 at the age of 84.
She was honored Friday with the unveiling of a new bench and spray park feature she had advocated for in Nelson Mandela Peace Park on the corner of North Evaline and Broad streets in Garfield.
Staff writer Ashley Murray was there as water misted from the new feature. Several generations of Ms. Brose’s family gathered alongside state Sen. Wayne Fontana, D-Brookline, Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Lincoln-Lemington, Mayor Bill Peduto and Councilman Ricky Burgess for the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
“Aggie is the ‘why’ this happened,” Mr. Fontana said. “The idea of a spray park was first brought to my attention by Aggie a few years ago while attending an event right here that she invited me to . ... Anyone who knew Aggie knew she was very determined and a passionate person, so understandably, she made a great case for why a splash component was so important to this parklet and to this community. Sadly, Aggie passed last year before she got to see it, but I, for one, wasn’t going to let her down.”
Mr. Fontana said he and fellow Democrats secured a $100,000 state grant to fund the upgrade to the parklet designed by Andrea Ketzel, a landscape architect for the city.
So much for those handshake deals
But not all the news about our parks was good news. Ashley also reported an audit conducted by Controller Michael Lamb, at the request of City Council, found numerous agreements, contracts and leases between the city and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy were “a little bit concerning.”
It turns out 58 existing contractual documents were difficult to locate and, in some cases, were entered into by just one city department or one city authority. Authorizing council resolutions for two of the agreements could not be located in the city’s legislation records.
Some of the deals, Mr. Lamb said, were “not as transparent as we would like them to be.”
The audit came with nine recommendations, including a suggestion the city appoint people to the conservancy’s board of directors.
“If we had presence on that board, a lot of this information would be more transparent,” Mr. Lamb said.