City government’s double standard
Pittsburgh famously comprises 90 diverse and unique neighborhoods. Most have community councils that address local issues, maintain small green spaces and guide redevelopment.
My beleaguered Deutschtown neighborhood launched its council in 2005, merged with another group in 2008, and by 2016 was digging into meaty issues like rezoning.
That provided me one side of an eye-popping education in how local government works. Or fails to. The other side has come, sadly, through my involvement with a Downtown church.
The government’s disdain
The implication of what I’ve seen is worse than just negative impacts on businesses, churches, and residents. It’s worse because witnessing my own government’s disdain for the institutions that hold society together has been embittering. And a government that blithely sows bitterness is foolish indeed.
First, my community group’s half of this tale of two standards:
The main artery into the East Deutschtown-Spring Garden neighborhood is Chestnut Street, a continuation of 16th Street as it heads north from the Strip District. Trolleys once traveled its length, ferrying workers to nearby mills and bringing a steady stream of patrons to its dozens of small businesses.
About 20 years ago, the power-that-be decided this area would be rezoned to allow only attached single-family homes. The few mom-and-pop establishments that had survived the I-279 gutting of Deutschtown were grandfathered, but barely: We had to fight hard to get a coffeehouse permitted where a barber shop had recently shuttered.
As the area’s fortunes improved, we asked to return Chestnut to its small-business zoning. Here’s what the city made us do:
We had to hold a series of special public meetings, send repeated notification letters to every property owner along Chestnut Street, distribute flyers to every building within 200 feet of Chestnut, document every meeting’s attendees with signature sheets, produce agendas and minutes and maps, report on all of this at our normal monthly community meetings — and provide proof of all this work to the City Planning Department and our City Council member.
We did all of this as volunteers, within a six-month period.
When three affected property owners (out of 50-plus) opposed the rezoning, we worked out an exemption that would pass legal muster by encompassing their homes and an adjacent parklet.
After this Herculean effort, our council member reneged on her public promise and declined to support the change.
Governmental double standards
When a government agency proposes a much greater change that will bring upheaval to large swaths of the city, why should it and its professional staff be held to a far laxer standard than we citizens and volunteers are?
That is what has happened with the rebranded Pittsburgh Regional Transit and its recently begun “University Line.” This “bus rapid-transit” project is part of a county-wide plan that was approved by Allegheny County Council after — reportedly — 75 meetings held over a 10-year span in a county with 1.2 million residents.
This is what a dozen representatives from our church were told recently after the full brunt of the “University Line” portion was finally made clear.
But how many of the PRT’s 7.5 meetings per year were held with “stakeholders” — with the people whose lives and businesses will be impacted most? (For Deutschtown’s rezoning effort, we had to organize more than that in six months, prove contact with every stakeholder and hold a vote.)
In PRT’s brave new Downtown, all establishments on one side of Sixth Avenue will lose vehicular access as one-way traffic with a “high-speed” bus lane is introduced. Though it’s already a no-parking zone, vehicles are tolerated on weekends and for weddings, funerals and daily deliveries of all sorts. A “red line” for the bus lane will make this impossible.
It’s unclear what will happen on a soon-to-be one-way Fifth Avenue where, despite no-parking postings, dozens of vehicles are stopped all day long, especially at a daycare facility, hotels, restaurants and the state liquor store.
While the government was crafting its plan, managers and pastors came and went, new restaurants opened, apartment construction began, and so on. Our church people have found, from going door to door (what a concept!), that virtually no neighboring establishments knew what was coming down on us from PRT.
Why does the government demand a higher standard from me as a volunteer than it requires of itself and its pros? Where is the accountability?
In Deutschtown, the city council member who refused to respect her constituents’ desire for rezoning lost crucial support and her subsequent re-election bid. A reasonable outcome.
How bureaucracy works
That’s how democracy works. That is not, alas, how bureaucracy works. The Downtown churches holding our frayed social fabric together could, once cut off, wither away. I won’t be expecting justice.
But remember — the University Line is just one part of a county-wide project. You might want to find out exactly what future our authorities have chosen for you.