Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey wants to invest more money in infrastructure and public safety next year, according to a draft proposal for the city’s 2024 budget. The plan envisions delivering on long-promised infrastructure improvements, while taking steps to restructure the city's police department and continuing a controversial use of park tax money.
“We are committed to doing all we can to provide truly excellent core services while protecting our bridge infrastructure and furthering our work to make Pittsburgh the safest city in America,” Gainey said.
The $839 million plan — $683.7 million in operating expenses and $155.5 million in capital projects — reflects a roughly 2% increase over Gainey’s 2023 budget. The plan does not envision a tax increase for city residents.
According to Jake Pawlak, Pittsburgh’s Deputy Mayor and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Gainey administration wanted to make “fewer changes” to the budget than last year.
“This budget builds off of work we did in the 2023 budget,” Pawlak said.
'Civilianizing' the police
Part of that work will include hiring 12 new “Community Service Aides” in the police bureau, an effort Pawlak says is meant to "civilianize" some public safety tasks. The aides would take over lower-priority calls, like parking violations and minor property theft reports, from uniformed officers.
“We're taking our first stab at civilianization of some functions in the police bureau in this budget,” he said. “It's a small number of positions, but it's a critical step towards adopting national best practices there.”
Pawlak said the crew’s purpose is to “free up the time of other patrol officers to focus on Chief [Larry] Scirotto’s directive to become more engaged with the communities they’re serving.”
How many patrol officers the city needs or will employ has been a topic of much debate. The city has long budgeted for 900 uniformed officers but has been unable to fill all those positions for several years. Gainey’s 2024 plan calls for 849 officers, but Pawlak stressed that the decrease is a reflection of a temporary state of affairs.
“It's going to take us multiple years and multiple rounds of recruit classes to get the bureau back to its currently authorized number of 900,” Pawlak said. So instead of tying up money to cover those salaries, Gainey’s 2024 plan reduced the number of officers to spend that money elsewhere.
But Pawlak pledged that the city will increase the number back to 900 over the next five years. “That is and remains the target,” he said.
The budget also anticipates moving the staff of the Reaching Out On The Streets program, a much-anticipated initiative to provide support for homeless people and those in crisis, from the Allegheny Health Network into the city. The dozen or so staffers affected would be housed under the Office of Community Health and Safety.
Bridging gaps, and using parks tax revenue
Gainey, whose early days in office were overshadowed by the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge, plans to triple the city’s investment in bridges next year. A fund to preserve and restore bridges would be allocated $3.6 million, while another $27 million would go toward renovating the currently closed Charles Anderson Bridge.
The city’s capital budget allocates more than $19 million for paving projects and about $927,000 for city-wide traffic calming measures. And its operating budget proposal adds four new employees to the city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure to create “the city’s first in-house bridge crew,” according to a release from the mayor’s office.
Next year's budget also envisions reprising a controversial move Gainey made last year: using the city's parks tax, an additional property-tax levy whose proceeds are to benefit the park system, to purchase vehicles.
A year ago Gainey proposed spending $1.6 million in revenue from the tax on trucks, tractors and other vehicles. Though the move sparked debate among City Council members and local nonprofits, the new budget calls for spending another $716,400 on public-works vehicles.
Pawlak said the investment will help the city reverse years of neglect of its public works fleet, which he said had been sacrificed so the city could invest in higher-priority equipment for the police, fire and EMS bureaus.
“The parks tax is allowing us to use a portion of its proceeds on reinvesting in parks that does not compete with fire trucks, police vehicles, ambulances and street maintenance vehicles,” Pawlak said. “It’s certainly supplementing what we would be spending on vehicles and equipment.”
The city plans to spend another $1.3 million in parks tax revenue to support four major park upgrade projects — in Mellon, Frick, McKinley and Riverview parks — with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
A one-year pause on new projects
But outside the parks spending, the budget proposal does not envision any other new capital projects next year.
Pawlak said that's because the city hopes to catch up on capital projects that were already on the books.
“A one-year pause on new projects was, in the mayor's opinion, the right choice for the city right now,” Pawlak said. “With the long list of active projects, some of which are multiple years behind schedule frankly, we take the view that we should spend a year focusing on catching up on project delivery, on finishing the projects we've started.”
The city appears poised to make progress on a planned public safety training facility next year. Gainey’s proposal allocates $855,000 to create a master plan for the former Veterans Administration campus in Lincoln-Lemington. According to Pawlak, a plan by former Mayor Bill Peduto's administration to centralize the headquarters of all public safety bureaus — police, fire and emergency medical services — has been scrapped.
Gainey wants to instead use the site for new training facilities for the three bureaus. Notably, the facility would be the new home of an indoor gun range for Pittsburgh Police. The plan could close an outdoor firing range in Highland Park which has long been disdained by residents in the neighborhood.
Next year will mark a turning point for infrastructure investments: 2024 will be the last year that federal pandemic-relief money can be allocated for certain projects.
'We need everyone to pay their fair share'
The draft proposes an increase in personnel across multiple city departments including City Planning, Permits Licenses and Inspections and Environmental Services.
Gainey’s proposal also grants a 4% wage increase to staff in his office, while the rest of the city’s non-union employees will see only a 3% increase. Pawlak said the disparity closes a wage gap created last year: The city granted a 3% increase to non-union employees elsewhere in government, while those in the mayor’s office only saw a 2% increase.
The budget does not account for wage increases expected for the city’s bureau of Fire and EMS nor the union for public works employees including custodians, carpenters and other laborers. Pawlak said that’s because contract negotiations with those unions are ongoing.
“If the negotiations conclude before the end of the year, then there'll be an opportunity to adjust for them,” Pawlak said. Otherwise, the city would reopen the budget early next year to approve a ratified contract, a step it took after the city and police union came to an agreement.
The budget also doesn't appear to envision a major spike in payments in lieu of taxes from nonprofits, or other new sources — even though Gainey's statement asserted that to succeed, "we need everyone who should pay their fair share to pay their fair share.”
The city is engaged in an ongoing review of tax-exempt properties, with a goal of returning many to the city’s tax rolls. Gainey ran for the mayor's office with a promise to make large tax-exempt employers like UPMC contribute to the city's bottom line. His office is currently seeking to spend up to $400,000 on outside legal expertise for the reviews.
The administration is calling on the public to weigh in on his draft proposal at a number of public meetings schedule this month:
- Wednesday, October 4, 6 PM: Troy Hill, Provident Charter School, 1500 Troy Hill Road
- Wednesday, October 11, 6 PM: Larimer, Kingsley Association, 6435 Frankstown Avenue
- Thursday, October 12, 6:30 PM: Hill District, Jeron X Grayson Center, 1852 Enoch Street
- Monday, October 23, 6 PM: Chartiers City, Community of Change, 3622 Centralia Street
- Tuesday, October 24, 6 PM: Hazelwood, Pittsburgh Firefighters Local, 120 Flowers Avenue
The mayor will present his final proposal to City Council in November, and the budget must be ratified by the end of the year.
