City Council votes to forgo preliminary budget, keep declaration

Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday voted to forgo the presentation of a preliminary operating and capital budget and to again extend the emergency declaration the city has been working under since March.

The preliminary budget’s deadline was set for Sept. 30, but with the COVID- 19 pandemic bringing economic uncertainty, City Council voted to bypass the process and allow Mayor Bill Peduto to present the final budget to council in November.

Mr. Peduto sent the council a letter in August asking them to consider amending the ordinance regarding the budget’s deadline.

Councilwoman Deb Gross, the only person to vote against the bill, took issue, saying council and the public would have only a month to look over the budget.

The move puts pressure on the council “especially now when we’ve seen 100 days or more of demonstrations in the streets, really, about what we fund and what we don’t fund,” Ms. Gross said at Tuesday’s meeting, referencing ongoing protests against systemic racism and police brutality.

“I really hesitate to compress those public discussions to just the end of the fiscal year. And I think it’s going to make everyone feel that they didn’t have enough opportunity to really digest and take a position,” she said.

Councilman Corey O’Connor agreed with Ms. Gross’ assessment but conceded that he also understood the mayor’s reason for changing the budget process.

The mayor’s office estimates there will be a $ 100 million deficit this year due to the pandemic. The 2020 budget totals $ 720 million for operations and capital spending.

“I do understand it’s a oneyear thing, so that’s why I will go with it,” Mr. O’Connor said. “I think I’m about 50- 50 on this. But I think it’s important that everybody know, especially the general public and a lot of people that work in the city, that council is going to be up against it with only a month to decide this budget.”

Mr. O’Connor cautioned that the decision doesn’t set a precedent for the next few years and suggested that anyone who may be concerned about the budget should contact the mayor’s office immediately.

Councilman R. Daniel Lavelle told council members they

needed to start having meetings with department directors to get an idea of what the budget could look like so that council isn’t “caught off guard.”

Mr. Lavelle, the chair of the Finance and Law Committee, will “lead council’s charge” into the budget process, Councilman Ricky Burgess said.

The bill passed, 6- 1. Council President Theresa Kail-Smith and Councilman Anthony Coghill were not present for the vote.

The legislative body also waived the rules of council to extend the COVID- 19 emergency declaration another 28 days, making it effective until Oct. 6.

Elsewhere, Councilman Bobby Wilson introduced legislation that would designate two locations as Historic Structures: the Hanauer-Rosenberg House on Lockhart Street in the East Allegheny neighborhood, and the Spring Hill School on Damas Street.

Both bills would require public hearings to gather testimony on whether the designations are appropriate.

At the meeting’s end, Mr. Burgess commented on President Donald Trump’s condemnation of Pittsburgh protesters who on Saturday yelled profanities at diners, drank a patron’s beverage and broke a glass.

Mr. Burgess said that when he was in high school, he was one of the few African American students at the school and would be called “ugly” names.

“I grew up in a period of time in the ’ 60s in Homewood where fighting was in my DNA,” Mr. Burgess said.

“We fought people from other blocks, we fought because it was Tuesday, you know, we fought because it was too hot, we wrestled — it was just part of our DNA.”

However, he was told he would be dismissed from school if he continued fighting students who called him names, and he stopped fighting back.

“That had a really big impact on me because I found out that there is something ... providential about doing right,” he said. “And that is that it creates its own justice, it creates its own righteousness, it creates its own impact. And I found out that I didn’t have to be violent. I just had to be right.”

He said the cause protesters are fighting for is right in many ways, and if “we can just stick to being right,” such actions would have their own advantages and could be a “moment of transformational, providential power.”